DATE: Tuesday, November 11, 1997            TAG: 9711110273

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   80 lines

LAWYER BEING INVESTIGATED IN CASE OF WIDOW'S MISSING MONEY

Police are investigating a 72-year-old lawyer who the Virginia State Bar said took more than $90,000 from an elderly widow client against her will.

The lawyer, Alan S. Mirman, recently surrendered his law license after the Virginia State Bar accused him of taking the money from Nina Mary Benkert of Virginia Beach. She died penniless in 1995 at age 73.

On Friday, police searched Mirman's house near Wards Corner and seized financial records relating to the Benkert estate. The search warrant, filed Monday in Circuit Court, shows police seized computer diskettes and paper records.

Prosecutors would not discuss details. ``There is an ongoing investigation,'' prosecutor S. Clark Daugherty said. ``We will decide what charges to bring, if any, when the investigation is complete.''

In an interview Monday, Mirman acknowledged taking Benkert's money, but said she wanted him to have it as a gift. He said he has no written documents to prove that.

``She knew everything that was happening, and it was what she wanted done,'' Mirman said. ``I told her, `Nina, it's your money.' She said, `No, it's your money, Alan.' . . . She told me, `You keep it.' ''

Benkert's relatives declined to comment Monday, as did the family's attorney, Glenn B. McClanan of Virginia Beach.

Mirman voluntarily surrendered his law license in September, shortly before a State Bar hearing at which he could have been disbarred. The bar then dropped its charges against him last week.

The bar had accused Mirman of taking the woman's money, mingling it with his own in a trust account, then gradually depleting the account ``by drawing checks for his own purposes.''

A bar audit concluded that Mirman frequently mingled his own money with clients' money in the trust account - a serious ethical violation - then ``essentially used the trust account as a personal checking account.'' He had no receipts, journals or ledgers to account for the money, the bar said.

Mirman has practiced law for 45 years. He ran a one-man law office on St. Paul's Boulevard, across from Norfolk Circuit Court, specializing in divorce cases.

In an interview Monday, Mirman admitted that he commingled his money with Benkert's and knew it was wrong. ``I did it anyway because I was serving a client,'' he said.

Mirman said he kept about $70,000 of Benkert's money as a gift and gave the rest to her, as she needed it, before her death.

Mirman said he did not fight the State Bar because he knew he had no written proof of Benkert's gift. He said he also gave up his license, in part, because he was tired of the growing lack of civility among lawyers.

``I was going to surrender my license at the end of the year. This accelerated it,'' he said.

A summary of the bar's charges against Mirman was filed last week with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Mirman managed Benkert's financial affairs from 1975 until her death in 1995, the bar said in its summary. She had $86,662 in a stock account that Mirman liquidated in 1993 and put in his attorney trust account, the bar said.

Mirman then made several checks out to cash from the trust account, totaling $27,132. He claimed he gave the money to Benkert, the bar said, but he actually used the money for his own purposes.

When Benkert died, the bar said, Mirman told her daughters that there was no money left for Benkert's funeral expenses, giving no other explanation. The daughters then sued Mirman for the money.

Mirman lost that civil case after a trial in Virginia Beach Circuit Court last year. A judge ordered Mirman to repay $96,459 to the family. Mirman has repaid some of the money.

At the trial, Mirman testified that Benkert gave him the money as a gift. The bar investigation, however, concluded that Mirman ``gradually depleted the account over time by drawing checks for his own purposes.''

Mirman is a former member of the bar's disciplinary committee for Norfolk. He stepped down two months ago. He also is a former member of the executive committee of the Norfolk and Portsmouth Bar Association.

This was Mirman's second brush with the law. In 1967, he pleaded guilty to failing to file an income tax return. He served 70 days in jail for that conviction. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Alan S. Mirman, 72, of Norfolk, has surrendered his license to

practice law in Virginia. KEYWORDS: FRAUD

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