A north Alabama attorney and former judicial candidate has been sentenced to prison for the theft of $250,000 from her clients.
DeKalb County Circuit Judge Jeremy Taylor sentenced 43-year-old Teresa Darwin Phillips to 20 years, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Monday.
Phillips, a Republican, was an attorney practicing in Sylvania.
The investigation began in 2020 and was led by the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office. It showed that Phillips used the funds given to her by clients and other elderly individuals for whom she had been appointed as legal guardian or conservator for her own personal gain.
Phillips previously pled guilty on November 7, 2022, to nine felony offenses.
She had launched a campaign in 2019 seeking a district judge position.
“Trust is fundamental to the attorney-client relationship. Once a lawyer has gained the trust of a client, particularly an elderly client, they owe that client the highest degree of honestly and loyalty,” said Marshall said.
“To see that trust betrayed on such a wide scale warrants a severe reaction from the justice system,’’ he said. “Our team saw to that.”
“Our community deserves to have attorneys who take their jobs seriously and works with integrity and honesty,” said District Attorney Summer Summerford. “My office will not stand for the intentional, premeditated targeting of vulnerable people who rely on attorneys for help in times of need. Although this sentence will not replace what the victims lost, hopefully it will provide the closure in this long case and deter other attorneys from making the same mistakes.”
