What happened to Florida attorney who disappeared with at least $630K?

The odyssey of a Fort Lauderdale attorney who disappeared with at least $630,000, some of which was intended for an octogenarian woman’s care, went to Philadelphia, returned to Fort Lauderdale and will end in Texas.

Specifically, a federal prison in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

On June 26 in Fort Lauderdale federal court, Judge David Leibowitz ordered John Spencer Jenkins, 55, to surrender Friday to start serving time at a federal prison in the Metroplex, where Jenkins has family. After pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, Jenkins got two years, nine months for each charge, sentences to be served concurrently, plus $760,865 restitution.

Another part of Jenkins’ sentence is a 500-hour residential drug and alcohol treatment program. That and a line from his only pre-sentence letter of support — “John completed a residential substance abuse program and continues to regularly attend AA/NA meetings” — indicates what might have driven him to desert a promising law career to disappear with a chunk of neighbor William Walters’ estate.

Disappearing acts and funds

Like Jenkins, Walters lived in Wilton Manors. Walters set up his estate to go to a nephew, two nieces and the care of a younger sister. That sister is now 89, the age at which Walters died on Oct. 18, 2021.

As executor of the estate, Walters’ nephew, Larry Corbin, hired Jenkins, aka “Spencer,” to handle the legal side of getting the money to whom it needed to go.

“(Jenkins) represented to (Corbin) that funds relating to (Walters’) estate should be deposited into the Jenkins Law Firm’s (trust) accounts so that (Jenkins) could manage the distribution of those assets among (Walters’) designees,” Jenkins’ admission of facts states.

After Walters’ estate was liquidated, $543,832 was wired into Jenkins’ firm’s trust account. He soon transferred some of that money through a couple of other accounts, cash movements that prompted the money laundering charge.

Jenkins’ admission says he “caused the deposit of money from (Walters’) estate into the Jenkins Law Firm’s (trust) accounts under the false pretense that he would be distributing the estate when, in truth and in fact, he embezzled the funds for his own personal use.”

Jenkins also took $88,000 he’d been wired for another client after a commercial asset sale.

None of Walters’ estate money reached the Louisville, Kentucky-based family it should have.

Another client of Jenkins’, Peter Mullins, claimed in a lawsuit that Jenkins abandoned his case so totally that Mullins didn’t know about the judgment against him until he learned there was a lien on real estate he wanted to sell.

Corbin hadn’t heard from Jenkins in a month when he filed a complaint with the Florida Bar on July 17, 2023. Jenkins let his law firm’s state registration paperwork lapse in September 2023. His Fort Lauderdale office was empty. His phone numbers were disconnected.

Jenkins was found in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, 2024, and charged days later.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Altanese Phenelus handled the prosecution of the case.