Fort Lauderdale Divorce Lawyers Should Warn Clients Not To Invade E-Mail Accounts

Richard Brown, a suspended Florida lawyer, is charged with hacking into his wife’s email account. He is accused of gaining access to thousands of her e-mails. Some of those emails include conversations with her Florida divorce attorney about the parties ongoing marital and family law case.

Brown has been jailed since May 5, 2011 on charges of organized fraud and grand theft of more than $50,000 from his prior clients. He was suspended from The Florida Bar in April, 2011 based upon allegations that he misappropriated client funds.

Mr. Brown is also accused of passing worthless checks, grand theft and criminal use of personal identification information. Brown blames most of his problems on a difficult divorce case which is pending in Florida. Now, the latest accusations pertain to his intentional interception of electronic communications from his wife so that he could use the e-mails against her.

In November, 2010, approximately 30 days after the parties separated, Mrs. Brown realized that her Gmail account had been compromised. Specifically, many of her email messages were forwarded to him through his girlfriends account. After obtaining a search warrant, the State Attorney’s Office obtained warrants and learned that 4,921 messages were forwarded from June, 2010 through November, 2010