Lamb
A Beaumont attorney who fled after being indicted has been arrested and is now in custody.
Kip Kevin Lamb, 56, was charged with misapplication of fiduciary funds, a first degree felony. He was indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury on May 3, but when police followed up with an arrest warrant the attorney could not be located.
Authorities found Lamb in Arkansas on May 8, and he is now in the Jefferson County Jail on a $1 million bond.
Lamb, 56, is accused of syphoning funds from a $1 million church hurricane insurance settlement. The charges are the same as those outlined in a civil suit previously reported on by the Southeast Texas Record.
In its complaint, the church alleges it won $1.094 million from a settlement with Lloyds Insurance Co. in 2006 for damages caused to its property by Hurricane Rita.
Following the settlement, the church's pastor, Lonnie Treadway, ordered that the money be deposited into a trust account held by the Lamb Law Firm, the suit states.
"The ostensible reason for this action was to protect these funds from potential judgment creditors in a lawsuit then pending against the Church and some of its staff," the complaint says.
However, the church alleges the law firm did not hold the money in a trust fund, but instead stole the money from the church.
"Treadway knew and had reason to know that the lawyer defendants were not holding the church's money in trust and may have authorized or encouraged the lawyer defendants' misappropriation of those funds," the suit states.
Investigators say the money was transferred from the trust account to a different account, according to court papers. From there, money in the other account went into the firm's general operations account.