Common Pleas Judge Laurel Beatty placed Burt on probation yesterday for five years and ordered her to complete 240 hours of community service — the equivalent of 40 hours a week for six weeks. If she violates probation, the judge said she would send Burt to prison for three years.
Beatty said her decision was guided by Burt’s lack of a previous criminal record and by the small chance that others would be victimized by Burt, who surrendered her law license in 2011.
“You were an attorney who betrayed your client’s trust,” the judge told her. “You cheated a child out of money.”
But Burt’s failure as an attorney “has not put anyone else at risk,” Beatty said. Had Burt not paid restitution or surrendered her law license, the sentencing would have been “a very different story.”
Burt, 34, of Berwyn Road in Upper Arlington, pleaded guilty in April to charges of theft and tampering with government records.
She could have been sent to prison for 4 1/2 years.
She declined to make a statement in court or to comment after the hearing.
Burt was supposed to file paperwork with the probate court to recognize the child’s father as guardian after the child’s mother died. The parents weren’t married, and the father, Mark Chapa, lives in Texas.
Instead, Burt altered a document to make it appear as if she were the child’s guardian, and she sent it to the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, where the child’s mother had worked. From April 2008 to April 2013, the retirement system deposited death benefits totaling $67,183 in Burt’s personal savings account.
Assistant Prosecutor Kimberly Bond asked the judge to impose a two-year prison sentence, saying Burt hasn’t shown remorse and doesn’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of the offense.
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Former Upper Arlington lawyer gets probation for death-benefits theft