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Eight months and one day after federal fraud charges against him were dismissed, former Wilkes-Barre attorney Anthony J. Lupas died last week, according to an obituary received Tuesday.
He was 80.
Lupas, formerly of Plains Twp. and Laflin, died on April 8 at Little Flower Manor Nursing Home, his obituary said. Private services were held at his family’s convenience.
Admitted to the bar in 1961, Lupas served as Wilkes-Barre Area School District solicitor for more than a decade. But his long career ended in controversy, after prosecutors said he bilked more than $6 million over an 18-year period from clients who were promised a return of 5 to 7 percent interest in a bogus investment scheme.
Lupas was indicted in May 2012.
“That’s not the man I knew,” said former Wilkes-Barre Area Solicitor Jeff Namey. “He was a family man. His grandchildren were his life.”
Namey, who worked with Lupas in the school district for 16 years, said a majority of their conversations revolved around the former solicitor’s grandchildren and their accomplishments.
Lupas was a good and religious man, Namey said, who always performed very well as solicitor.
He said he could not make a determination as to whether Lupas committed the crimes of which he was accused, but said he would be disappointed if the allegations were true.
“He was probably the last person in the world I would think capable of doing something like that,” he said. “A lot of good people were hurt.”
Lupas pleaded not guilty to all charges and raised a claim of incompetence to stand trial.
Lupas’ defense team argued that he was suffering from an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Experts who assessed his condition said Lupas exhibited “significant cognitive decline.”
Last August, a federal judge dismissed the criminal charges, based on determinations by mental health experts that Lupas was not competent to stand trial. Lupas was released from a federal Bureau of Prisons medical facility in North Carolina and returned home to Luzerne County.
Victims of the frauds allegedly committed by Lupas and other attorneys were reimbursed by the Pennsylvania Lawyers Fund for Client Security, which is funded by an annual assessment on every licensed attorney in the state. The fund pays a maximum amount of $100,000 to each client.
In the 2012-13 fiscal year, 34 people who filed claims against Lupas received $2.23 million from the fund. In the 2013-14 fiscal year, 14 claimants received a total of $1.05 million.
The case led the state Supreme Court to strengthen the accountability standards for attorneys when investing client funds.
Under changes adopted late last year by the court, a new Rule of Professional Conduct requires an attorney to be licensed to handle the type of investments that Lupas did.
Amy Kelchner, a spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, confirmed the Lupas connection in December, saying it was “one of the cases that spurred the rules changes.”