Price County attorney faces 6-month suspension

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A Price County attorney is facing a six-month suspension of her law license over allegations that she lied to her employer about going to a conference and submitted altered travel receipts for the trip.

According to a complaint the Office of Lawyer Regulation filed on March 22 against Beth Bant, who practices in Prentice, Bant was working as a compliance attorney in the legal and compliance unit of Merrill-based Church Mutual Insurance Co. when she committed two counts of misconduct.

Bant, who earned her law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2012, worked for Church Mutual from February 2014 to December 2016, according to the OLR. In October 2016, Bant got permission to attend an American Bar Association conference, telling her supervisor that the conference was in New Orleans and would be held in December 2016. She submitted $1,115 for the registration fee and was absent from work for two days and would be out of the state for three days

However, Bant’s supervisor was told that another employee had seen and spoken to Bant at a grocery store in Merrill at around 10 a.m. on one of the days Bant was supposed to be at the conference, the OLR alleges. When the supervisor asked Bant about the trip, Bant said she attended the conference for the first day and returned to Wisconsin early because she wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t getting much out of the conference. But charges for the second and third day continued coming in through the company’s expense system, according to the complaint.

When Bant and her supervisor talked again, Bant showed the supervisor a bruise on her leg and said she had been assaulted and had used her own frequent-flyer miles to book a flight for 4 a.m. back to Wisconsin. Bant gave the supervisor documentation of the flight.

According to the OLR, Bant’s supervisor requested Church Mutual’s internal audit department do an investigation, which revealed that the ABA conference had been in November 2016, that Bant had never registered herself for the conference and that Bant had altered the receipt for the registration fees she expensed as well as for the hotel and meal receipts she submitted. Church Mutual also discovered that Bant had never stayed at the hotel that she had submitted receipts for and that the number on the receipts of Bant’s airline tickets matched flights in July and August 2016 out of Chicago and were in the name of her boyfriend and his daughter.

Also during the investigation, Church Mutual discovered that Bant, to cover expenses from a continuing-legal-education seminar, had submitted a $557.28 charge for four nights at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Madison in June 2016. Bant attended the seminar, but the company discovered she had falsified her request for mileage and hotel reimbursements. Bant did not stay in the hotel for four of the five days and her receipt did not match those from the Crowne Plaza, according to the complaint

After Church Mutual terminated Bant in December 2016, she voluntarily reimbursed the company in February 2017 for the $1,115 registration fee and the $557.28 related to the July 2016 mileage and hotel expenses, according to the complaint

The OLR alleges that when it investigated the matter, Bant told the OLR that her former boss had told her to falsify expense reports and that her former boss created one of the falsified receipts that Bant had submitted. However, the OLR could not find any evidence to support Bant’s claims, according to the complaint.

The OLR alleges that Bant’s conduct violated two rules of attorney conduct. For one, she engaged in conduct involving dishonesty, deceit, fraud or misrepresentation. Second, Bant violated a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that regulates lawyer conduct. The OLR contends that Bant’s behavior runs awry of a standard of conduct established by the court in a case from 1995  holding that attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their law firms and a duty of honesty in their professional dealings with their firms.

The OLR is asking the justices to suspend Bant’s license for 6 months.

Bant has no public disciplinary history and her license is in good standing, according to the OLR. Bant has 20 days to respond once she is served the complaint. The court will appoint a referee to preside over the case and make recommendations, which the justices will review. Follow @erikastrebel