From the Citizen…
A Lakes Region lawmaker who is still in jail for violating a court order regarding restitution in a felony fraud case has a criminal record dating back to the 1980s and has been described by one official familiar with his record as a chronic offender.
James E. Ryan, 50, of 11 Crickett Way, Franklin, remains jailed after failing to pay the last $9,675 of the more than $35,000 in restitution he was ordered to pay in 1992 after pleading guilty to four counts of forgery and two counts of passing bad checks.
Franklin police arrested Ryan, who represents Franklin and Hill in the state House, last week on a warrant issued by Carroll County Superior Court for failure to pay restitution.
Dennis Robinson, superintendent of the Carroll County Department of Corrections, confirmed that Ryan remained jailed as of Tuesday in lieu of $9,675 cash bail.
A review of court records shows that Ryan is no stranger to the criminal justice system and that his legal woes date back some 15 years. In a January 2001 motion filed by then-New Hampshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin seeking to impose a suspended sentence against Ryan, the prosecution detailed that the defendant had graduated from Fairfield University and then from St. John’s University of Law in 1982 and he passed the Connecticut bar. He practiced law in the city of Danbury, Conn., and served two terms on the City Council and one term on the Board of Education.
In 1986, he was convicted in Connecticut of one count of larceny and one count of issuing a bad check. In 1988, he was convicted of forgery.
Records indicate he surrendered his license to practice law and moved to Massachusetts. Between 1988 and 1993, Ryan was convicted of several crimes, including larceny, larceny by false pretenses, larceny by check and the unauthorized practice of law.
He later moved to Freedom, a small town in Carroll County near the Maine border, and he subsequently was convicted in the Ossipee and Conway district courts on charges of issuing bad checks.
In arguing for the suspended sentence to be imposed, the state charged that Ryan has run a “clandestine” law office and posed as a lawyer while working as a clerk at a Manchester law firm. His parole officer also found a yellow page listing Ryan allegedly placed, advertising his legal services in Vermont.
In February 1994, one month after he was paroled from the New Hampshire State Prison, Ryan took a position as a paralegal and law clerk with the law offices of Jean-Claude Sakellarios and Associates. He was hired under the express conditions that he was not to represent himself to any of the firm’s clients as an attorney licensed to practice law in the state or anywhere else. His duties were expressly restricted to legal research and the drafting of forms and legal documents for review by the firm’s lawyers. After a long list of infractions involving the alleged misrepresentation to the firm’s clients and allegedly accepting funds from “clients” unknown to the firm, Attorney Sakellarios terminated Ryan’s employment in September 1994, the state charged.
Arrested in October 1994 for violating his parole, he pleaded guilty, admitting to making misrepresentations to the Sakellarios firm’s clients and, without the firm knowing it, had accepted funds from clients. Ryan’s parole was revoked and he was sent back to the State Prison.
At a hearing to decide whether to impose the suspended sentence, Ryan’s probation officer testified, “It is my feeling that this man will get out and do it again. I liken him to an individual like I deal with sexual offenders really, fixated pedophiles. I consider Mr. Ryan a fixated property offender. And he has devoted his life — as far as I can see it — with a life of crime.”
“I really feel that protection of the public is the only consideration here. I truly feel that rehabilitation for this man is totally out of the question based on my direct experience with him over some months,” testified Chief Probation and Parole Officer Mark Macdonald.
According to a report he filed with the court, Macdonald had received a tip that Ryan had set up a law business at his home when he was living in Lancaster. Macdonald was able to confirm that Ryan had established New England Attorney Resource Inc., and obtained a federal tax identification number. Just six months after his parole, Macdonald reported catching Ryan in the Grafton County Superior Court in North Haverhill and in the Registry of Deeds doing research on a title for a real estate transfer. Macdonald said he confiscated Ryan’s appointment book and drove Ryan home.
In searching Ryan’s residence, the parole officer reported confiscating a dozen individual files that suggested legal work by the defendant. After reviewing the files, Macdonald reported to the court that he had contacted both the N.H. State Police and the Grafton County Attorney after finding a bank book that appeared to indicate that Ryan had taken $8,000 from an 81-year-old widow from Woodstock on the pretense of making investments but he had instead deposited the money into his personal savings account and spent it.
In his report to the court, Macdonald characterized Ryan as a “definite threat to the community” and said a “warrantless arrest was indicated.”
Ryan pleaded guilty to four counts of forgery in Carroll County Superior Court. During the sentencing hearing, former County Attorney Warren Lindsey told a judge that, had the case gone to trial, the state would have been able to prove that Ryan had stolen two checks from his ex-wife, Patricia, and then cashed them without her authority, thus obtaining $8,000 in cash.
While Lindsey told the court that Ryan had been “disbarred in Connecticut,” defense attorney Swako Gardner said Ryan’s license was merely inactive, as he suffered from “alcoholic disabilities.”
In connection with the Carroll County charges, Ryan also admitted that he had entered a personal and professional relationship with Andrea J. Curtin, a real estate agent with an office in the town of Weare. The state charged that Ryan falsely represented himself to Curtin as a Bay State attorney specializing in taxation and offered to manage her business accounts and personal finances. On Sept. 12, 1991, Ryan issued checks in the amount of $1,166,50 and $2,670.08 from Curtin’s business account pursuant to her obligations arising from certain real estate closings. The checks were returned for insufficient funds because of the defendant’s “self-serving mismanagement of her accounts,” the state charged.
During his sentencing, Ryan’s lawyer told the court that Ryan did not tell Curtin he was an attorney.
At the time Ryan was indicted on the Carroll County charges, he already was being held in the Hillsborough County Department of Corrections jail in Manchester on the bad check allegations.
On the four Carroll County forgery charges, Judge Bruce Mohl sentenced Ryan to 1.5 to three years in the N.H. State Prison, suspended during good behavior. He was ordered to make restitution and was credited with 258 days of pretrial confinement.
On the two bad check charges, he was sentenced to two to four years to run concurrently with the forgery sentence. Both sentences were deferred for a period of one year following the defendant’s release from the Carroll County sentences. In addition, restitution was ordered.
Details of the 1992 bad check cases were not immediately available. Old criminal cases are stored off-site, a criminal clerk at Hillsborough County Superior Court said.
In asking for the suspended sentence to be imposed as a result of the probation violation, Attorney General McLaughlin wrote, “Defendant’s conduct surrounding the Sakellario incident once again demonstrates that after having been granted a suspended sentence, defendant thumbed his nose at the court and continued to engage in illegal or immoral conduct and failed to lead a law-abiding life.”
In June 1995, the state filed a violation of probation charge against Ryan, alleging that he had lied to his probation officer regarding his employment and his out-of-state travel.
Ryan also was alleged to have violated his parole by representing himself as an attorney, failing to pay restitution and associating with convicted felons while assisting prison inmates with their cases.
Ryan moved to dismiss the probation violation on the grounds that the addition of probation to his previously imposed sentence was an improper modification of his sentence. The lower court denied the motion and Ryan appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The high court declined to address Ryan’s claims on the grounds that Ryan had failed to preserve the issue via a timely appeal. The Supreme Court did, however, affirm the imposition of the two- to four-year deferred sentence out of Hillsborough County.
In October 2000, the Supreme Court decided Ryan’s appeal and reversed the imposition of the suspended sentence on the grounds that he was not given adequate notice of the basis for the imposition of the sentence.
“The defendant has frustrated the state’s efforts to collect restitution for the better part of two decades,” Assistant Carroll County Attorney Susan Boone wrote, stressing that Ryan, as a former attorney, is “well aware that mailing a motion the day payment is due with no attempt to seek assent is not the proper way to have a judge’s order modified.”
On Feb. 2, 2007, Judge Edward J. Fitzgerald III found Ryan in contempt of court for failing to make payments as agreed. He ordered Ryan to immediately pay $5,000 or to be jailed until he did.
Additionally the court ordered that on or before March 15, 2007, Ryan was to provide the Department of Corrections with the needed releases to obtain all pertinent financial information and to provide the department with copies of all his bank statements for the past six months. Pending further investigation, the court also ordered that Ryan was to make payments in the amount of $1,000 per month on the 30th of each month, commencing on March 30, 2007.
On July 30 this year, Judge Peter Fauver, sitting in Carroll County Superior Court, wrote that he has reviewed the case and, particularly, the agreement and order of Sept. 11, 2006, in which Ryan had agreed to pay off the remaining amount of restitution.
“That order is clear and unambiguous on its face and required the defendant to pay $23,700 in restitution; $14,181.36 has been paid with a balance of $9,675. If arrested bail will be set at the amount to be applied to restitution,” Fauver wrote.