Runser now faces federal criminal charge

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

A former Van Wert attorney who gave up his right to practice law last year after he was accused of misappropriating funds from an estate and trust he managed, now faces criminal charges related to the same issues.

C. Allan Runser, 72, has been charged with one count of mail fraud by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio. The charge follows an investigation by the Lima FBI office.

As part of the charge, Runser is accused of misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients by selling clients’ securities and withdrawing client funds for his own personal use, while writing checks to himself from client’s accounts, falsifying his law firm’s financial accounts, and misrepresenting the assets contained in client’s accounts.

The criminal charge is in addition to a civil lawsuit filed against Runser in connection with his alleged misappropriation of nearly $500,000 from the Barbara Mary Shackley Trust. Michigan resident Mary Ann Jensen, a beneficiary of the Shackley trust, filed that lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Toledo.

That lawsuit alleges that Runser wrote 50 unauthorized checks totaling $471,350 to himself or his law firm between March 2, 2011, and September 13, 2013. The estate was valued at $803,788.86 as of March 31, 2011.

Runser, a local attorney with more than four decades of legal experience, was also charged with misappropriating more than $90,000 from the Koch estate, as well as taking funds from the Shackley Trust over a period of years, and mishandling his responsibilities to a number of other legal clients.

An investigation by the Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline led to Runser’s resignation November 6, 2014, which effectively barred him from practicing law in Ohio.