Lawyer paid school fees with clients' cash

David Michael Tansey stole $1,999,081 from 11 clients over a four-and-a-half year period from mid-1999.

He was sentenced to a minimum of two years and six months imprisonment on Thursday in the same court where he once plied his trade, the Victorian Supreme Court.

The former Melbourne barrister and solicitor, who worked for the law firm Lynch and McDonald, pleaded guilty to 25 charges of theft.

Tansey's offences involved 44 separate transactions between the accounts of his clients and his own family trust, his wife's restaurant business and a financial institution of which he was the director.

Tansey, 58, used withdrawals, which ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, for personal use, including the payment of his son's tuition fees and the purchase of a Melbourne property.

“Though the Legal Practitioners Fidelity Fund compensated victims for their financial losses, the misappropriations nevertheless caused the victims stress and trauma,” he said. “Yet not one of those clients expresses any desire for retribution. Rather, they convey their sense of betrayal and deep disappointment.”


Justice Almond said Tansey had cooperated with investigations into his financial affairs and appeared genuinely remorseful.

“Whilst your previous good character has some broad relevance, it is of little weight when dealing with a breach of trust by a solicitor who is an officer of the court,” he said.

A 2004 investigation by the Law Institute of Victoria revealed Tansey had deposited clients' funds into his accounts to benefit himself and family members.

He used $87,919 from one client to pay rent on a property in Black Rock which he later bought, and stole another $70,000 from the client before repaying $1,738.

In another case he stole $455,000 from the account of one client who had died and left him as the executor of her estate, and $282,520 from the estate of another client to pay for his son's private school fees.