Longtime attorney agrees to disbarment

DIXON – A Dixon attorney who pleaded guilty in July to stealing thousands of dollars from an elderly client won’t fight a state agency’s move to disbar him.

Al Williams, 64, filed a motion with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission this week, asking that his name be removed from the “roll of attorneys” in Illinois.

The state Supreme Court will consider the request in its September or November session, said Jim Grogan, deputy administrator and chief counsel of the commission.

Williams, who was admitted to the bar in May 1985, declined comment Wednesday.

He pleaded guilty July 19 to financial exploitation of a disabled person and was sentenced to 6 months conditional discharge and ordered to pay $15,992 in restitution to the estate of Dorothy Gaul, which he did immediately.

Gaul, then 97 and living in a nursing home, hired Williams in August 2008 to handle her financial assets, which included her Dixon home and more than $113,000 in checking and savings accounts.

Williams opened a joint checking account with Gaul to be used to pay her expenses.

Between December 2008 and August 2009, he wrote 25 checks to himself, totaling $95,000. He deposited 19 of them, totaling $92,800, into three bank accounts, then used the money for his own “business and/or personal purposes.”

In August 2009, Gaul hired a new attorney to look into Williams’ use of her funds. Several months later, he sent the attorney a check made out to Gaul for $61,383.85. She died Feb. 1, 2010.

Julie Farster, administrator of Gaul’s estate, sued Williams in Lee County. Two months later, he was indicted by a grand jury.

Later that year, the commission filed a complaint accusing him of “dishonesty,” “deceit,” and breaching his “fiduciary obligations” to Gaul.