From the Concord Monitor…
Franklin Rep. Jim Ryan remained in the Carroll County jail yesterday on unpaid restitution of nearly $9,700 from a 16-year-old criminal case. But that’s only a portion of what he owes. Ryan is also delinquent on two debts in Merrimack County totaling more than $230,000, according to court records.
Ryan’s arrest Friday shocked those who knew him as a tireless Franklin booster, a policy wonk and a prominent member of the state’s Democratic Party. Ryan, 50 and serving his second term, chaired the House Transportation Committee and the recent New Hampshire presidential campaign of Sen. Joe Biden.
Before his arrest, Ryan was also teaching public policy at New England College and political science at Keene State College. But a review of state and county court records yesterday stood at odds with the public face Ryan has put forward in New Hampshire.
He’s been convicted, mostly for financial crimes, in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He was jailed Friday for allegedly failing to repay the money he stole in Carroll County while passing bad checks.
Ryan surrendered his law license in Connecticut after forgery convictions there in 1988 but has continued to hold himself out as a lawyer, according to court records. In fact, Ryan took such advantage of a Manchester attorney who tried to help him on probation, a prison probation officer told court officials Ryan was beyond rehabilitation.
“It is my feeling that this man will (reoffend),” the probation officer testified in 1996 during a hearing about Ryan’s probation violations. “He has devoted his life – as far as I can see it – with a life of crime.”
Ryan could not be reached yesterday at the jail. His attorney, Jim Craig, said last week that he is working on new bail arrangements for Ryan that would allow Ryan to leave jail, work and begin paying off his debt.
Ryan was born in Connecticut, graduated from law school in 1982 and began his law career in Danbury, where he also served two terms on the city council and one on the board of education, according to records at the New Hampshire Supreme Court. By 1986, though, he was in legal trouble.
He was convicted in Connecticut that year on one count of larceny and one count of issuing a bad check, according to a summary in the Supreme Court file. Two years later, Ryan was convicted of forgery, the file said. The specifics of Ryan’s Connecticut offenses were not available yesterday.
Ryan surrendered his law license and moved to Massachusetts, the file said. His legal problems continued. Between 1988 and 1993, Ryan was convicted in Massachusetts of larceny, larceny by false pretenses, larceny by check and unauthorized practice of law, according to the Supreme Court file. The details of those convictions are not available, because Massachusetts does not release criminal records older than three years.
Ryan moved again, this time to Freedom, the Supreme Court file said. The file did not include many specifics of Ryan’s New Hampshire offenses, but it tallied them.
Ryan was convicted in 1991 of issuing bad checks in the Ossipee and Conway district courts, the file said. A year later, Ryan was convicted in Carroll County Superior Court on four counts of forgery. He was also convicted in Hillsborough County Superior Court of theft by unauthorized taking.
State officials described the crimes as a scheme that stretched from Carroll to Hillsborough counties.
For those offenses, Ryan was sentenced to the state prison for 1½ to 3 years and ordered to repay the money he had stolen in the course of the forgeries. The court told Ryan he could pay the money in $50 weekly installments. It’s that unpaid debt that Ryan was arrested and jailed on late last week, according to the prosecutor’s office in Carroll County.
About the same time, Ryan was also convicted in Hillsborough County Superior Court on two counts of issuing bad checks. In that case, Ryan had entered into a professional and personal relationship with a real estate agent from Weare and falsely represented himself as a Massachusetts attorney specializing in taxation, the Supreme Court file said.
Ryan persuaded the woman to let him manage her business accounts and personal finances, and in 1991 he wrote two checks off her business account worth about $3,900 to cover real estate closing costs. The checks, however, were returned for insufficient funds because of Ryan’s “self-serving mismanagement of (the woman’s) account,” the Supreme Court file said.
Ryan pleaded guilty in 1992 to those charges and received a somewhat lenient sentence: Judge Kathleen McGuire ordered Ryan to repay the money he’d taken from the real estate agent and sentenced Ryan to two prison terms of 2 to 4 years each. But McGuire gave Ryan a chance to avoid prison by deferring the sentence for a year. If he maintained good behavior, Ryan could come back to the court after a year and show why he should not have to serve the sentence.
This sentence coincided with Ryan’s parole from the Carroll County sentence, which also required him to be on good behavior. According to the Supreme Court file, Ryan failed on both fronts.
During that first year out of prison, Ryan took a job as a paralegal and law clerk with the Manchester law office of Jean-Claude Sakellarios & Associates. His employment contract made clear that he was not to represent himself as a lawyer or enter into fee agreements with clients. He violated that agreement within months, according to the Supreme Court file.
Ryan initially impressed Sakellarios with his willingness to work late, after the office had closed. Only later did Sakellarios realize that Ryan was using his time alone in the office to hire himself legal clients, the court file said. He secretly agreed to help one man, who had hired the firm on a criminal matter, to negotiate a corporate restructuring on the side, the file said.
He agreed to represent another client in a landlord-tenant dispute. Others had unknowingly hired Ryan to handle corporate and immigration matters. Ryan had accepted money for each of the cases but had not done the work, the file said. And by holding himself out as an attorney with the office, he had exposed the firm to its own legal problems, the file said.
Sakellarios told Ryan’s probation officer in a September 1994 letter that he was angry and hurt by Ryan’s deception. He said he had been warned about hiring Ryan but said he felt it was his duty since he had been an advocate for helping parolees.
Sakellarios told prison officials that Ryan had lied about his behavior or minimized it when confronted. Sakellarios fired Ryan in 1994.
“It appears that there is simply no way by which I can control your activities,” he wrote Ryan. “All the meetings we have had and the discussions which took place apparently have not stopped your actions.”
Sakellarios went on: “These activities violate not only the conditions and limitations of your employment but the rules and ethics of the legal profession.”
Ryan’s actions prompted the Hillsborough County Superior Court to call forward Ryan’s deferred sentence on the other charges, according to court records. He tried to fight the court on a technical argument but lost. Ryan then appealed the matter to the state Supreme Court, but he lost there, too.
It was not clear yesterday whether Ryan returned to prison to serve the once-deferred sentences or whether he has repaid the money he owed the real estate agent.
What was clear is that Ryan’s financial problems worsened following those cases.
In 2003, a former minor league baseball player named Obispo Brito sued Ryan in Arizona over career-ending injuries he suffered while playing in a game. Ryan, according to court records, owned part of the company Brito played for, and Brito claimed $219,000 in damages.
Ryan fought the case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, representing himself, but ultimately agreed in 2005 to pay Brito in installments. He was to pay $10,000 up front, followed by monthly payments of $500, according to court records.
When Ryan didn’t pay, Brito’s lawyer, Roger Phillips of Concord, asked the court to find Ryan in contempt. Ryan asked for another chance, telling the court he had come into “unforeseen financial circumstances” and had been unable to pay the money. He agreed anew to make good on the payments, the court records said.
In 2006 and 2007, Ryan again failed to make the required payments, the file said. Phillips returned to court. Ryan attempted to file for bankruptcy protection at least three times but was not successful, according to court records.
As of this April, Ryan was $8,500 behind on his payments to Brito. In August, he and Brito renegotiated an agreement. Ryan promised to pay Brito $11,000 by Aug. 27, followed by monthly payments – or face arrest.
Phillips said yesterday that he had not received the agreed-upon payment from Ryan. He was preparing to ask Brito how he wanted to proceed.
At the same time Ryan was in court with Brito, he was fending off another lawsuit.
In 2006, Bow Mills Bank and Trust sued Ryan in Merrimack County Superior Court for defaulting on a $9,000 loan. Ryan failed to respond to the lawsuit, prompting the court to find in favor of the bank. The court ordered Ryan to pay $11,100 in debt, court fees and legal costs. Ryan has not paid that debt and is due in court Sept. 10 to explain why, according to court records.
In July, mortgage holders foreclosed on Ryan’s Franklin home. In addition to his court-ordered debt, Ryan has listed himself as responsible for a wife and three children as well as student loans dating to 1975 and credit card debt.
And he can’t file for bankruptcy again for nearly a year, under orders from the bankruptcy court.