all right good afternoon anybody not ready all right we're here this afternoon to talk about the arrest of Christopher Reynolds uh Reynolds is a lawyer who's been practicing personal injury law here in Pinellas County for several years and for the last several years Reynolds has been ripping off his clients now he's 44 years old his home address is 8 500 North Belcher Road Apartment 104 in Pinellas Park and his office address was at 7178 Seminole Boulevard right down the road here in Seminole Reynolds graduated from Law School in 2006 as I said he practiced personal injury law here in Pinellas County he worked for a large firm for several years and then in 2015 he opened his own practice here in Seminole his practice primarily again doing plaintiff's work personal injury law representing people who had been injured in car wrecks so I guess he would be classified as what people call a car wreck lawyer in early October of last year early October of 2022 the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office received a complaint from a person who had been represented by Reynolds in a car wreck case you've been injured in a car accident and she had retained him in 2020. so after the woman retained him in 2020 Reynolds did what car wreck lawyers do and she was referred by Reynolds to a medical provider a doctor under what's called a letter of protection and Reynolds then after he does the client intake and gets her out to a treating physician chiropractor doctor whoever under the sweater protection then he puts together a demand package and makes a financial demand of the insurance company of the at fault driver now what personal injury lawyers do is refer people to doctors with whom they the personal injury lawyers have a relationship and the doctors treat these people under this letter of protection which in essence means they're treating them but they're not getting paid until the lawyer settles the case or the case gets resolved through trial the lawyer then negotiates the medical bills with the doctor based on the settlement amount in the case then what happens is the lawyer gets paid the doctor gets paid and the injured person gets compensated for their injuries so the person we received the initial complaint from treated with the doctors and communicated with Reynolds from as I said 2020 through uh mid-2022. now in that period of time two two years is not an unusual period of time for litigation and to resolve a car wreck case during their Communications Reynolds told the person that her case was pending that he was negotiating a settlement with the insurance company and then all of a sudden Reynolds stopped abruptly stopped communicating with her so the woman obviously concerned didn't have any more contact with her lawyer the case was supposed to be in a stage of being resolved so she contacted the insurance company herself in about October of 2022 and she learned that the insurance company had settled her case with Reynolds back in March of 2022 for one hundred thousand dollars so at that point is when she made the complaint to us so again throughout early 2022 after Reynolds had received and pocketed the woman's hundred thousand dollars he continually lied to her in the communications before those Communications abruptly stopped that he was ongoing trying to resolve this with the insurance company he also affords the woman's name on settlement documents and he never paid her medical bills with the settlement money so the woman then reported the theft and we began the criminal investigation we also learned from the Florida bar that it had received complaints about Reynolds and the bar was conducted in an investigation into systemic theft of monies by Reynolds so what we found out during the course of this criminal investigation between October 2022 and this month that there were 16 people who have come forward who retained Reynolds as their lawyer in personal injury cases that go back as far as 2019 where he did what he did to the first victim he agreed to represent them in a personal injury case he referred him to doctors he sent monetary demand packages to insurance companies forged clients names on settlement documents and pocketed all the settlement money leaving these people with no compensation for their injuries and holding the bag for all of their medical bills so we identified that Reynolds stole over 850 thousand dollars in client money from 16 people so this represents the people we've identified so far and the amount of money that rentals close to eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars that Reynolds has stolen so in addition to all these people losing their money to compensate them for their injuries they are now on top of all this personally responsible for the medical bills and that totals hundreds of thousands of dollars uh additionally that they're on the hook for in fact one of the victims already has a lien against her from one of the medical providers in December of 22 the Florida bar actually the Florida Supreme Court issued an emergency suspension order of Reynolds licensed to practice law in Florida so he hasn't been practicing since December through the investigation detectives learned that Reynolds has a drug problem it's believed that a portion of the stolen money was used to buy drugs also detectives have reviewed his financial records and subpoenaed his bank records and other documents and show that he spent a lot of money on pornography and prostitutes his bank records show he spent over thirty thousand dollars on the website only fans over twenty six thousand dollars on an anonymous billing site called mm Bill almost four hundred thousand dollars on PayPal and over twenty four thousand dollars on Uber so Reynolds was arrested this morning he's charged with multiple counts of Grant Theft and money laundering he's booked into the county jail several of the charges that he faces are first degree felony charges that face a maximum statutory penalty of 30 years in State Prison based on this we strongly believe that there are additional victims who have not come forward we ask that anybody who was victimized by Reynolds and you can see a big difference between his Warrior pitcher and his booking photo from today anybody who is victimized by him is not reported please come forward contact detective Cindy caklow and our economic crime section and we'll take the complaint and investigate the case so this is a situation where you got somebody is supposed to help people who's sticking it to him and stealing their money and these people are not only out the settlement money for compensation for pain suffering damages that happen as a car wrecks but again their medical bills never got paid and now they're on the hook for the medical bill so it's just a really a terrible situation for somebody that's supposed to be protecting and helping to victimize his clients Sure Response been to obviously being arrested and you guys finding out that he's done this to at least 16 people in our community what's his reaction he lawyered up go figure yeah sure um he said he worked with a doctor on this and the doctor never reported that he never got any money from it one of them did one of them did he worked with several doctors yeah yeah it's very common for uh personal injury lawyers and car wreck lawyers to work with the doctors work with providers people come in they refer them to them and that's why they do this letter of protection because they have this Arrangement and the arrangement is is that they refer to the doctor the doctor charges a certain price and then they reduce that price and they negotiate it based upon the settlement amount so this is just the way the system works um and you know one of the doctors had reported I think he can find it out there you know publicly on the as a basis of the I think the Florida bar investigation on that but so you know one of them did and other other doctors also of course haven't been paid either so you know how many doctors I don't know how many it's very common that there's several uh depends upon I mean he had a pretty decent thing going uh to Trevor's point do you believe there are any other people who may be involved in in crimes right we don't have any information to that effect uh it appears that he was sole practitioner uh you can see from the office that he had there on summer Boulevard a pretty small place and kind of drive up he was meeting a lot of his clients in bars uh other places like that um but there's no indication of it and lawyers are required to have what's called an Iota interest on trust account interest varying trust account and so he was taking the money into his Florida bar required Iota account and then just transferring it out into a personal account with the same bank so it looks like he was doing all this himself and then you can see from these expenditures you know he got the information that he had a drug problem but you know when you're spending you know thirty thousand dollars on only fans and uh twenty four thousand dollars on Uber and four hundred thousand dollars to PayPal you know and you know he's spending a lot of money so he probably didn't need any help spending it had seen just the the already system static um had the victims come over to the Florida bar first they come forward to you first don't come with the process of finding out um I you know it was all about the same time uh I think that uh the bar had received complaints I believe before we did but it was pretty contemporaneous so it was all around October of last year but I think the bar got some complaints before we did advice if you people were certain cases you know it's really hard because you know people want to have uh you know confidence in lawyers illegal professionals that are out there trying to supposedly help people trying to right wrongs trying to guide them through the the processes like going to a doctor it's like going to anybody else is that you think that the person is there and you know their license to practice law they've got the boxes checked they've got the credentials they've got the credibility that goes with that and they're really just a thief who is ripping them off when you look at some of these people and they range in age I mean some were very young and some were very old you know elderly folks who got ripped off by this guy and it's terrible in some of the individual amounts you can see on here are not you know insignificant I think one of them was 148 thousand dollars you got a whole bunch and so as far as what that tells you is is that in the car wreck world is is that I mean really I and we see this I mean we let it get car wrecks all the time because we have a bunch of cars on the street and we get involved in car wrecks but most of the car wrecks you know are going to settle fifteen thousand twenty thousand you start seeing these settlements up here in 150 000 range what that tells you is is that those 34 hurt those people had some injuries those people had some damages and uh and again they're out what they should be compensated for and on top of it now they've got to deal with the medical bills and it's just terrible especially when this one person already has a lien against them Etc there's no way for them to recoup anything they're like victims again basically yeah they are well you know I'm sure that he'll be ordered to pay restitution uh as a result of the criminal case but you know that'll take uh time and go through a process and of course you know based on this uh you know we'll see what the the criminal justice system work and um you know hopefully he does some State Prison time which will then you know delay restitution uh that they'd get but that's really the only recourse is to get restitution uh from him thankfully not very often I mean this is really a rarity uh you know you know this is not what lawyers do and this is you know an anomaly situation uh we don't see this very often thankfully how long have you been practicing um so you graduated at law school I think I said in 2006. let me tell you yeah yeah here um yeah 2006 is when he graduated and he worked for a a large personal injury firm here in Pinellas County and he worked there until he opened his own practice in 2015. so he's been out practicing for a while and again you know he had a his own practice um you know and he started but he first started intaking these clients that he was ripping off in 2019. so it wasn't that long after he opened up his own practice that he started representing these people that he was ripping off and again it takes time for these and you can see with some of them like the one I just explained to you with the woman that first came forward is yeah in case I've been going on for a couple years and so he pocketed her hundred thousand dollars back last March she didn't realize it until October when he stopped communicating and then she calls the insurance company and they said no we paid you 100 Grand and she's I didn't get anything well there you go is there any one particular victim that you that stands out as just enhanced than any of the others that he that he victimized no they're all bad they're all bad yeah it's all a bad situation for everybody and you know unfortunately you know I think that what we're going to see I mean just because of these and some have just come in in the last couple weeks um there's more people out there I don't know what the end the total dollar amount will end up being but you know it's significant and I'm sure that as a result of this coming out today that more people are going to come forward will you like go back on all his his records of all the clients that he's had and reach out to them to see if they got paid well we don't have access to all those records going back um you know we wouldn't know unless people come forward to us so they need to come forward to us and then of course we'll fully investigate it um I think that's right yeah all right thanks everybody sure okay thank you