Runser pleads guilty to mail fraud count

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

TOLEDO — A former Van Wert attorney who lost his license over alleged improprieties in handling client accounts has pleaded guilty to a federal criminal charge of mail fraud related to those same accounts.

C. Allan Runser, 72, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in a hearing held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Toledo. Judge Jack Zourhary accepted the plea. In exchange for Runser’s guilty plea, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case following an investigation by the FBI, agrees to not pursue any other charges related to the case.

The mail fraud charge carries with it a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Runser will be sentenced on March 8.

Runser, who began practicing law in 1967, was accused of misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients by selling their securities and withdrawing clients’ funds for his own personal use, while writing checks to himself from client accounts, falsifying his law firm’s financial accounts, and misrepresenting the assets contained in client accounts.

According to the federal investigation of Runser: “It was also a purpose of the scheme to defraud that defendant stole money and property from his clients in order to financially support (his law firm) and maintain his standard of living.”

The criminal charge is in addition to a civil lawsuit filed against Runser in connection with his alleged misappropriation of approximately $500,000 from the Barbara Mary Shackley Trust. Michigan resident Mary Ann Jensen, a beneficiary of the Shackley trust, filed that lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Toledo.

That lawsuit alleges that Runser wrote 50 unauthorized checks totaling $471,350 to himself or his law firm between March 2, 2011, and September 13, 2013. The estate was valued at $803,788.86 as of March 31, 2011.

Runser was also charged with misappropriating more than $90,000 from the Koch estate, as well as taking funds from the Shackley Trust over a period of years, and mishandling his responsibilities to a number of other legal clients.

An investigation by the Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline led to Runser’s resignation on November 6, 2014, which effectively barred him from practicing law in Ohio.

Updated at 9:45 a.m. today