Jim Wirken gets sentenced to 13 months in prison, probably not long enough

Like nearly all professionals, most lawyers are smart, conscientious, ethical people — it’s the few bad ones who can ruin it for everyone else.

Jim Wirken is one of the bad ones. Wirken once represented Gary Colton in a slip and fall case that resulted in a $185,000 award for his client in 2005. Colton, a Kansas City man, was soon approached by his attorney with a so-called investment opportunity. In exchange for $100,000 of that settlement, Wirken’s law firm promised Colton and his wife a 10 percent return on their investment. (After attorney’s fees, the Coltons should have gotten $120,000 out of the $185,000 settlement.)

Wirken made a few initial payments to the Coltons but stopped by 2011. Colton died of cancer on August 10, 2012; he could have used some of the money Wirken owed him to pay for his treatments.

The “loan” that the Coltons paid to Wirken represented part of an ongoing Ponzi scheme that the disgraced lawyer pulled at the expense of several clients. It’s part of the reason that Wirken is headed off to federal prison for 13 months.

Wirken was sentenced in federal court in Kansas City on Wednesday. Prosecutors recommended 15-21 months; Wirken thought a year and a day should do, citing the former attorney’s charitable work and dressing up like Santa Claus during the holidays.

Wirken came under federal charges in May when investigators learned that he had swindled clients from 2007 to 2012 to the tune of $800,000. He was charged with one count of money laundering when he raided a client’s trust account and put the money into Wirken’s law firm operating account.

Wirken once enjoyed a reputation as a prominent, amiable lawyer in Kansas City. He once represented former Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser; he once was named president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, a distinction usually reserved for popular lawyers.

But he had a penchant for rooking his clients, soliciting loans from them and then stiffing them later on. Wirken needed the money to keep his law practice and personal lifestyle afloat. He couldn’t get a conventional loan to fund the former and couldn’t save enough to realize the latter.

Wirken was disbarred in 2012. But Wirken said he would merely become a consultant to other lawyers (provided anyone wanted him around). When a Kansas City Star reporter asked Wirken about the shift in his career, Wirken said, “I’m busier now than I was before, but I don’t have to put up with the baloney.”

Baloney, as in, paying people the money they deserve?