Lawsuit: Family Elder Law attorney gambled away $1.75 million in client’s money

BARTOW, Fla. (WFLA) — A Polk County lawyer confessed to his client’s children he gambled away their late father’s $1.75 million trust fund, in a letter included in a lawsuit filed against Jason Penrod in the Circuit Court of Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit in Bartow.

“As this compulsion overcame me, I would gamble until I exhausted our family’s savings, my law firm’s profits; all the while avoiding reality and any type of feeling,” Penrod wrote in a letter sent to the plaintiff in early June.

In the letter, Penrod refers to himself as a “raging addict,” citing mental health and “post-traumatic stress endured from childhood.”

According to the lawsuit, Penrod also traveled to meet with the plaintiffs, Sherry Prevoznik and Charles Anderson, at a coffee shop in Pennsylvania to tell them in person what happened to their father’s estate.

He said, beginning in Oct. 2023, Penrod transferred approximately $1.75 million from the plaintiffs’ account, “basically the total amount of the trust funds I was holding” and wired the funds to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa, Florida “until the trust funds were exhausted.”

“As a raging addict by this time, I self-justified my actions by thinking that I was temporarily loaning monies to myself and then would pay them back to the trust with interest. My compulsion was in overdrive, and it felt like I was watching a nightmare of myself in a movie…almost like an out of body experience,” Penrod wrote in the letter to Anderson and Prevoznik.

According to the letter, Penrod proposed a repayment plan to include access to his life insurance policy, 401K and profits from his law firm, Family Elder Law, which he said grossed $2 million annually.

The lawsuit requests the plaintiffs be awarded $5.25 million in damages.

Attempts to reach the plaintiff’s attorney, Jacob Rubin, and the plaintiffs were unsuccessful Wednesday.

In July, Penrod abruptly closed his law offices .

“I trusted this law office and I was supposed to be taking good care of her, but my mind was completely on – how do I get her money back? What do we do?” said Leticia Labate, who previously spoke to 8 On Your Side about the closure.

Bank records show Labate’s mother paid the law firm $4,500 days before the closure.

Labate’s mother got her money back after her story aired on News Channel 8, and she passed away in the weeks that followed.

“Not just having to deal with her medical condition but also having to deal with an attorney who basically misappropriated funds was extremely painful,” she said.

An attorney on Penrod’s behalf filed a petition to revoke his membership with the Florida Bar , which would effectively close the Florida Bar’s disciplinary investigation.

His attorney, Richard Greenberg, filed a new petition this week, which would not allow Penrod to apply for readmission to the Florida Bar at a later date.

Greenberg declined to comment about the allegations, telling News Channel 8 he has not read the complaint filed in the lawsuit.

Greenberg declined to comment on Penrod’s whereabouts.

In a brief phone call, Penrod’s wife declined to comment on the allegations or her husband’s whereabouts.

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