Disbarred Mon Valley attorney gets prison for stealing from elderly client
A former Charleroi attorney who fraudulently diverted more than $500,000 from the estate of an elderly client with dementia was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison Wednesday.
Some 50 people – most of whom were there to support Keith Bassi – attended the disbarred attorney’s sentencing before U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab in Pittsburgh.
“The defendant chose to prey on the most vulnerable type of victim,” Schwab said from the bench as he handed down the sentence.
He ordered Bassi, who is free on bond, to surrender no later than May 13, and said he’d recommend he serve his time nearby at the prison in Morgantown, W.Va. The judge also ordered Bassi to pay a $100,000 fine, in addition to the more than $500,000 restitution he had already paid.
Bassi, 61, of Jefferson Township, Fayette County, pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud last year. Federal prosecutors said in court papers that Bassi – a former partner at Bassi, Vreeland & Associates and part owner of Mid Mon Valley Publishing Co., which prints the Mon Valley Independent – used his legal knowledge to help cover his tracks as he raided a total of $505,100 from a client between 2013 and 2016.
The victim was initially named in court papers only as “N.J.L.” but has since been identified as 86-year-old Nancy J. Lutz.
Bassi told the judge he was “broken” over the case and apologized to his family and friends, and said he was sorry to Lutz and her family.
“But, your honor, I need to say sorry, especially in public, to my wife, Betsy,” Bassi said.
His attorney, Stephen Stallings, sought a sentence of home confinement, describing his client as a respected family man and community member and saying Lutz wasn’t at risk because of Bassi’s out-of-character actions.
“There’s no question that this was a very aberrant occasion,” Stallings said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Melucci called Bassi’s actions “shameful and disgraceful” and pointed to the length of time Bassi was engaged in the crime against Lutz, who couldn’t look out for her own interests.
“This was not an isolated indiscretion,” Melucci said.
Bassi had executed a durable power of attorney for Lutz in 2006 while she was living in a senior care facility in Pittsburgh. In 2012 – the year she was diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease – she was moved to a facility that provided skilled nursing care.
Around the same time, Bassi was putting together an apparatus that allowed him to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from her estate, then valued at about $2 million. He opened an investment account in her name at a Philadelphia-based financial services firm and deposited assets from Lutz’s estate.
He used some of that money to pay the $55,000 yearly premiums on a life insurance policy he cashed in for more than $163,000 in 2016. That money was deposited in an account in his and his wife’s names.
Funds from Lutz’s estate also were used in 2016 for a $37,091 down payment on a house for Bassi’s daughter in Chicago, court records show. That year, Bassi also moved a total of $145,000 of his client’s money into Mid Mon Valley Publishing’s accounts with Charleroi Federal Savings Bank.
Schwab said Bassi engaged in a “continued pattern of long-term criminal conduct” and said he didn’t want to exercise one set of sentencing rules for lawyers and other professionals, and another for nonprofessionals.
Lutz was born into the Carson family that had been farming in Fallowfield Township since the municipality was organized in the 18th century, said her new guardian, Claude Carson of Mt. Lebanon.
She graduated in 1949 from Charleroi High School, having earned excellent grades, and expressed a desire to travel, naming Cuba as one of the places she wanted to visit, according to her senior class yearbook.
She never married or had children. She is a retired Pittsburgh middle school teacher, having earned the title of supervisor, Carson said.
Lutz lived out her dream, traveling to as many as 80 foreign countries before her disease progressed.
Carson and Ray Dougherty, another relative of Lutz’s who drove from his home in Northern Virginia, were at the hearing. They didn’t address the court but had previously sent letters to Schwab.
In his letter, Dougherty said many of his relative’s “personal, sentimental and antique” belongings were unaccounted for, despite provisions in her will, which Bassi drew up for her, saying she didn’t want the items auctioned off.
“I’m very unhappy because the Carson history is all gone,” Dougherty said after the hearing.
Staff writer Scott Beveridge contributed to this report.