After alleging a Miami lawyer misappropriated the funds of two clients, the Florida Bar petitioned and got an emergency suspension — although one of the clients, a former Tampa Bay Bucaneers player, filed an affidavit stating she is “a great lawyer and great servant to the public.”
The other client of Miami’s Rawsi Williams in the Bar’s petition, however, filed a Bar grievance after the first settlement check sent to her was declared invalid by her bank.
Williams’ suspension began Wednesday, 30 days after the state Supreme Court granted the Bar’s petition.
Williams disagreed with the Bar emergency suspension petition that said she “has caused, or is likely to cause, immediate and serious harm to clients or the public and immediate action must be taken to protect (her) clients and the public” by pointing out the grievance-filing client got her money in April 2024.
Since then, Williams wrote in a July 21 response to the Bar’s petition: “I have continued to represent clients without any alleged misuse of any client funds.”
Williams has been a member of the Bar since 2013 and has no previous disciplinary record.
News of the suspension dismayed former NFL player Akeem Spence when he learned of it Sunday from a Miami Herald reporter. Spence, who spent four years with the Tampa Bay Bucaneers and started all 16 games in 2018 for the Dolphins, spoke highly of Williams as a person and lawyer on Sunday and in an Aug. 31 affidavit to the Florida Bar.
When the Bar reached out to Spence about Williams, “I told them I had no complaints against her and that she did not delay or mess up my case,” the affidavit said. “I told them that I would recommend her to other people as well. I am very shocked to learn that the Bar still put my name in their complaint and acted like (Williams) messed up my case or caused delay in my case when I already told them that did not happen and that I have no complaints against (Williams).”
The Bar’s emergency suspension petition claimed Spence had to make monthly child support payments through Williams. Williams, the Bar claimed, caused Spence to fall behind on support payments by not forwarding the child support money, instead moving it to a personal account to use for a cryptocurrency exchange.
When the court ordered Spence to pay back child support, the Bar said, Williams “used funds from the cryptocurrency exchanges to pay the $31,500.00 in back child support to the mother.”
Also, the Bar said, Spence’s money went into Rawsi Williams’ law group’s operating account instead of the firm’s trust account, a “commingling of funds.”
Spence’s affidavit said he didn’t fall behind on payments and that the Bar’s description of Williams and child support money is inaccurate. After his daughter’s mother changed her Zelle information, he said, his daughter’s mother blocked him and neither she nor her lawyers would give the new information to him or Williams. So, he said, she couldn’t have the responsibility of sending his child support payments.
Eventually, “the judge made my daughter’s mom give me the payment information right at the hearing and we verified it at the hearing,” Spence wrote. “From there, I was to make all future payments. The judge did not blame (Williams) or accuse (Williams) of delaying the case or holding up any funds from my daughter’ s mom. (Williams) showed the emails of her trying to get the information.”
The Bar’s exhibits include a letter from Windermere’s Cindy Clermont that says she found lawyer Frank Allen to work on an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission case against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Allen told Clermont he wanted to bring on Williams. Clermont wrote that she eventually dealt with only Williams.
Williams and Allen got a settlement from the VA. Each law firm or solo practitioner attorney has at least two accounts — an operating account, out of which employees and bills get paid, and a trust account. Normally, settlement money would be sent to an attorney’s trust account, then sent to the client minus any agreed upon fees.
An affidavit from Allen said: “I personally witnessed the VA inform both Attorney Williams and me that it could not send (Clermont’s) settlement funds to Attorney Williams’ trust account due to their electronic payment system at that time, and that she must provide her operating account instead.”
Still, the Bar petition said, “the moment (Williams) accepted the wire transfer of Ms. Clermont’s settlement money into her operating account, she comingled money belonging to a client with her own operating funds.”
The Bar’s petition says the $86,425 settlement money from the VA hit Williams’ Bank of America operating account on Feb. 15, 2024. Included in the petition is a text message from Williams that morning telling Clermont the settlement money has arrived and after Clermont signs the closing statement, “your check will then go out overnight mail on Friday (Feb. 16) or Saturday (Feb. 17).”
A closing statement signed on Feb. 15, 2024, by Williams, Allen (electronically) and Clermont (electronically), said Allen would receive $10,000 in attorney’s fees, Williams would get $6,000 and Clermont would get $70,265.
A chart by the Florida Bar of Williams’ operating account activity said $10,000 went to Allen via Zelle on Feb. 15, 2024. But the chart also says, over the next several days, money went to various places, including family, a personal account and another operating account.
“None of the payments went to Ms. Clermont,” the Bar petition said. “Moreover, Ms. Clermont did not authorize any of the above-described distributions. As such, these actions constituted a misappropriation of Ms. Claremont’s settlement proceeds.”
The Bar chart says that account’s balance was $20,398 on Feb. 25, 2024, when Clermont texted Williams at 5:35 p.m. asking about her check. In an exchange included by the Bar, Williams texted back at 5:49 a.m. on Feb. 26, 2024, “Please verify your mailing address for me, and let me get back to you later this evening.”
Clermont sent Williams her address twice later that morning, Monday, Feb. 26. The check still hadn’t been sent on March 5, 2024, when Williams’ nephew, “whom I helped raise during his early years because my sister was a teenage mom,” she told Clermont, was murdered in Alabama. Williams said she still hadn’t recovered from the November 2023 death of her brother and would take time off for grieving and the eventual funeral.
When Williams returned, she sent a check for $70,256 on March 16, 2024, that USPS tracking included by the Bar said reached Clermont on March 21, 2024. The Bar included a copy of the check, which appears to have been written on Williams’ law firm’s trust account.
Clermont took the check to her bank the day she received it and was told it wasn’t valid. She filed a Bar complaint that day.
The Bar chart says Williams moved $47,000 on March 20, 2024, and $24,000 on March 22, 2024, both from the operating account that received the VA settlement to her trust account.
Williams said she didn’t know there was a problem until she returned from her nephew’s funeral, a claim Allen backed up in his affidavit to the Bar. He said Williams received no response when she tried contacting Clermont after seeing the check didn’t hit the trust account.
“The very first time we ever heard of any problems with the check was when Ms. Williams received the Bar complaint on April 22, 2024,” Allen wrote. “Ms. Williams contacted the Bar and myself that morning, and I emailed Ms. Clermont for us to wire her the funds immediately from Ms. Williams trust account.
“Ms. Clermont did not respond so Ms. Williams ended up sending Ms. Clermont a certified cashiers check from her trust account. She informed the Bar of this because we copied the Bar in our emails and sent a copy of the cashier’s check.”
Williams wrote in her reply, “I definitely was not trying to delay her funds or anything, that was just a horrible time. Even when the Bar asked me on the call if I knew what happened re: the check, I could not remember even about the V.A. situation or having made the deposits before leaving for my nephew’s funeral.”
Williams’ July 21 reply also said in her April meeting with the Bar that Bar auditor Matthew Herdecker “adamantly accused me of spending $42,000 of client settlement funds as my own money.”
That money came from The Herb Import Co., a New Orleans firm owned by Californian Gerald Daugherty that was the defendant in a federal suit from Payroll LLC. Neither Daugherty nor the business had filed a complaint or grievance against Williams.
An affidavit from Daugherty said the $42,270 in question was sent to Williams as “her full-earned nonrefundable flat fee for the federal case, which was not to be placed in her trust, was not intended to be payment for a settlement, were not funds for settlement, were not a settlement, and we had no expectation or belief that those funds would be placed in her trust, or were settlement or for use as a settlement.”