West Chester lawyer accused of raiding estate

In the last months of Rita Trish's life, the 91-year-old, who resided in a Gladwyne assisted-living facility, signed over control of her finances to her attorney, confident he would safely deliver her considerable estate to a friend.

The lawyer, Frank H. Morgan, 63, of West Chester, had another idea: siphoning $550,000 out of the childless millionaire's holdings to burnish his own fortunes, prosecutors allege.

Morgan, who was arrested Thursday, is accused of funneling Trish's money into his Nags Head, N.C., vacation home, his bank accounts, and his share of his Norristown law firm's expenses.

After arraignment, Morgan posted $15,000 cash bail.

According to a grand jury presentment announced Thursday by the state Attorney General's Office, Morgan confessed in writing that he had written checks himself on Trish's account for his various personal uses. Her full estate was worth more than $1.7 million at the time of her death in 2007, including cash and stock holdings that Morgan sold off on her behalf.

The lawyer now faces five felony counts with maximum possible penalties totaling 38 years in prison.

Attorney discipline records show that Morgan's law license was suspended in 1996 over his handling of another will.

In that case, a client's will instructed Morgan to set up a scholarship fund, and the client had requested that the scholarship be at a college in Indiana.

Instead, after the client died in 1986, Morgan set up the scholarship in 1991 at a different school - redacted from the disciplinary record - where his son had just been accepted.

Morgan's son and the daughter of a lawyer who had been Morgan's friend for 20 years each got scholarships that year.

Later, each lawyer lost his license for a year.