Lawyer who embezzled more than $80K from employer has license revoked

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has revoked the law license of a Greenfield attorney who embezzled more than $80,000 from her employer.

Jolie Semancik, who previously practiced family and criminal law, earned her law degree from Marquette University in 1994. Her license has been suspended since 2005, when it was suspended for six months for misusing trust account money by failing to pay a private investigator she had hired. Semancik did not apply for reinstatement.

She could not be immediately reached Wednesday. A telephone number listed on the State Bar of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Court System websites was disconnected. Semancik has said she didn’t have any plans to practice law in the future because she still didn’t feel “mentally capable” of acting as a lawyer.

Wednesday’s discipline stems from an Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint filed Dec. 17, 2013, asking the court to revoke Semancik’s license for embezzling money from a company in which she was vice president and operations manager.

According to the criminal complaint, between January 2010 and July 2012, Semancik stole $80,674.50 from Mayfair Title Corp., Wauwatosa, writing 19 checks to herself, her sister her company and a company that worked on her home. She pleaded no contest in March 2013 to a theft of more than $10,000 and was sentenced to four years’ probation.

The crime occurred when she “wasn’t in the right frame of mind,” she has said.

Other than in a telephone scheduling conference April 9, the court noted, Semancik did not participate in the proceeding. She did not respond to correspondence from the OLR attempting to resolve the case by stipulation nor did she appear at the May 12 scheduling conference.

And because Semancik did not participate in the OLR’s investigation, the justices agreed with the OLR’s request, which the OLR had not made in the complaint or the default proceeding, that Semancik pay $108,000 in restitution, with $58,000 going to Mayfair Title Co. and $50,000 to Society Insurance Co. She has also been ordered to pay $840.56 in court costs.

Semancik can apply for reinstatement in five years. Follow @erikastrebel