Lawyer Guilty of Stealing From Now-Dead Brothers

A once-prominent Los Angeles attorney was convicted Wednesday of embezzling $380,000 from two young brothers whom she had offered help in collecting on a life insurance policy on their mother, a police officer who died of cancer.

Angela Fawn Wallace, 42, faces up to eight years and eight months in prison for embezzlement, perjury and forgery.

A USC Law School graduate, Wallace lived in Hancock Park and once counted among her friends and clients such celebrities as basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

She remains a suspect in the June 2001 fatal shootings of Howard Byrdsong, 20, and his 18-year-old brother, Jontrae, Inglewood police said.

Sentencing for Wallace, who remains free on $150,000 bail, is set for Jan. 30.

Wallace’s attorney, Milton Grimes, had argued during the four-week trial that Wallace spent the money on the Byrdsong brothers, helping them rent an apartment and fix up their mother’s burned-out house so it could be sold.

Wallace received the $380,000 insurance check for Howard Byrdsong, eldest son of Shiree Arrant, in August 2000, and opened a bank account in his name using a forged power of attorney, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Goudy said. She wrote a number of unauthorized checks on the account, made them out to cash, herself, her law firm and others.

After Howard Byrdsong contacted prosecutors in May 2001 about the missing money, Wallace tried to strike a deal to return it if the brothers would release her from legal liability, Goudy said.

The brothers said no. A month later, they were shot dead in their Inglewood home by a man dressed as a postal worker, authorities said. No one has been charged in the murders.

In 1998, Wallace pleaded no contest in State Bar Court to seven counts of professional misconduct, including writing 16 unauthorized checks on the trust account of a Santa Monica retiree, Max Wolfe, days after he died, and was suspended from law practice for two years.

Wallace also is awaiting trial on separate criminal charges that she induced a friend to impersonate a business associate and lie under oath at a State Bar disciplinary hearing in a failed attempt to save her license to practice law in California.

The jury found Wallace and a co-defendant, Timothy Mack, 47, guilty on all six counts.