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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA $30,000 donation that convicted former attorney William Conour made four years ago to the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association will be given to a federal court fund to provide restitution to his fraud victims.
Conour in July pleaded guilty to a count of wire fraud in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. He admitted to information alleging he defrauded more than two dozen clients of at least $4.5 million. He faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Years before he was charged, Conour donated $30,000 in May 2009 to a general fundraising campaign for ITLA. “The ITLA has requested a court order authorizing them to deposit $30,000 with the Clerk of the U.S. District Court to be used for funding the payment of restitution to the victims in this case,” according to an Aug. 15 order signed by Southern District Chief Judge Richard Young.
The donation from ITLA marks the second contribution Conour made to legal institutions that have been provided to the court for victim restitution. The day Conour’s guilty plea was accepted, Indiana University vowed to return a $450,000 donation Conour made years earlier, and the university announced the I.U. Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis would excise the honorary naming of the William and Jennifer Conour Atrium at the law school.
ITLA executive director Micki Wilson said the organization’s executive committee unanimously agreed to take the action. “It was the right thing to do,” she said Tuesday.
Conour, 66, also has agreed to the sale of assets from his former Carmel home to raise money for restitution after he is sentenced Oct. 17. Conour has been in the Marion County Jail since Young revoked his bond June 27 for dissipating assets without court approval.
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