Bret Whipple accused of misconduct

High-profile Las Vegas attorney and former Nevada regent Bret Whipple fought many political and legal battles in the past two decades, but next month he may be fighting for his law career.

In August, the State Bar of Nevada filed a complaint that may result in Whipple losing his license or facing suspension. The seven-count complaint accused Whipple of professional misconduct in the handling of client trust funds and supervision of subordinates. This is the third time Whipple faces bar discipline since 2016 and he has also faced discipline over his accounting license, bar and accounting board records show.

“One of Respondent’s probation conditions was not to engage in any conduct that violates the rules of professional conduct during his probation,” Bar association lawyers wrote in the complaint obtained this month by the Review-Journal. The hearing is scheduled for Jan. 13 and 14, 2021.

Whipple has been a major player in Nevada’s political and legal scene for more than two decades. He started out as a public defender and then opened his own practice, defending people charged with murder and other serious crimes. In 2002, he won a seat on the Nevada Board of Regents, serving one term. He lost two reelection attempts.

Whipple, who successfully defended Cliven Bundy, acknowledged being stretched thin but denied intentional wrongdoing in phone interviews and in multiple motions. The problems, he said, started when an employee stole client money.

“I was wrong. I made a mistake,” he said, adding the theft happened right as he was starting the Bundy trial. “I should have come in on weekends and gone through checks. I trusted somebody I shouldn’t have trusted. I acknowledge that. I am accountable for my mistake… but it’s not like I wanted to cause harm to anybody.”

In a motion and interviews, Whipple also said a long-standing grudge with state bar counsel Dan Hooge, who usually heads up disciplinary actions for the bar, may be the source of his troubles. Whipple clashed with Hooge, who was then the Lincoln County District Attorney, in a 2017 theft case Hooge filed against a popular high school coach. Hooge lost his re-election bid after Whipple successfully got the charges dismissed.

“I can’t read Dan Hooge’s mind,” said Whipple, who got the bar committee hearing his complaint to remove Hooge from the case. “But does he have a personal vendetta and is he in a position where he can punish me when my work made him lose re-election?”

Hooge said he has stayed out of Whipple’s disciplinary investigation because of his prior dealings with the defense attorney, noting the complaints against Whipple that make up the bar discipline came from clients and an attorney.

“Any allegations that I went out and solicited those grievances would be false,” Hooge said in a phone interview. “There’s a saying that if the facts aren’t in your favor, argue the law, and if the law isn’t in your favor — just argue.”

Bar fight

The bar complaint lays out a series of Whipple’s alleged missteps, including failing to competently and diligently represent clients, problems communicating with clients, converting and co-mingling tens of thousands of client trust funds, failing to report theft from his office and failing to supervise non-attorney staff.

Whipple also allegedly failed to provide the bar with requested trust account ledgers and provided a QuickBooks record that shows money was transferred between funds, when that did not actually occur in the bank account, the complaint says. Whipple said he will soon turn over additional documents.

The problems started in 2017 after he uncovered more than $110,000 stolen from client accounts, the complaint alleges. “I recognize there was a failure to supervise an individual who committed a crime,” Whipple said, adding all clients have been paid back. “But I did not choose to be a victim.”

Whipple said he didn’t seek criminal charges against the former employee because the worker is paying him back. “I want to get that money from him,” he said, adding the former employee has paid back about $8,000. “It’s the quickest way to get my losses.”

The bar complaint alleges a substantial amount of client money was misappropriated.

Reno resident and client Nettie Sheets had Whipple hold more than $100,000 of her money but she only received about $40,000 back and the rest was misspent, according to the bar filing. Sheets, whose name is spelled Nettia on her Facebook page, could not be reached for comment.

Hooge said he doesn’t know details about Whipple’s discipline, and his deputy handling the case, Daniel Young, declined comment.

Whipple hired Gina Iacuaniello to straighten out the accounts and she reported the thefts to the bar, according to the bar complaint. She said Whipple’s office management and accounts were a mess, and he just moved money between accounts to pay clients.

“He doesn’t monitor his employees and his offices that he has,” she said. “He sets up an office and lets them do whatever they want. There’s no structure, no accountability. It’s just a free for all.”

Hunting tags for $50,000

Iacuaniello said she also went to Las Vegas Metro police with the theft allegations, providing business cards from two officers who interviewed her. Police declined comment on whether they are investigating either Whipple or the employee who allegedly stole money, and the Clark County District Attorney’s office said they were not reviewing any related cases.

Whipple paid nearly $20,000 in credit card bills and wrote himself a $16,000 check, the bar complaint says. He also wrote a $640 check to an RV park and spent $50,000 on trophy hunting tags for “personal recreational activities,” the complaint alleges. And Whipple wrote a $30,000 check from a client trust account purportedly to refund client money but bar investigators could find no evidence of a refund, according to the complaint.

In his response to the complaint, Whipple provided documents that show the $50,000 hunting tags and $640 RV check were on behalf of clients and not for personal use.

Royce Patterson, of Quitman, Texas, who bought the trophy hunting tags, said he wasn’t aware of any controversy.

“I sent the money to Whipple and he delivered it to (hunting property owner Leslie Michael Wood, Jr.) fairly quickly,” Patterson wrote in a text exchange with the Review-Journal. “I can’t say who’s money he used … but I sent it and Mike got his is all I can say for sure.”

Wood, Jr., of Caliente, Nevada, confirmed that he sold the tags to Patterson, but he never heard the money came from other client funds. “This was just between me and Royce,” he said, adding he paid Patterson back because his land didn’t attract enough animals for the hunt.

Whipple said he initially didn’t realize that the employee who was stealing was transferring trust money to his office account to hide the theft, so he didn’t know the checks he wrote on his office account were from client funds.

He said he mortgaged his home to make things right, and filed a motion to dismiss the discipline on Dec. 14. “How do you tell your wife you have to refinance the house to pay off employee theft?” he said. “That’s a tough conversation.”

Client problems

The bar complaint also alleges Whipple didn’t obtain $3,000 due in a divorce, taking 14 months to demand money owed. Iacuaniello and Whipple said the divorce client was homeless in Reno.

Another client claims Whipple owes her $230 in settling her mother’s estate and didn’t provide her accounting for her funds. She is in prison on a burglary conviction, records show. Neither client could be reached for comment.

Whipple denies wrongdoing in the estate or divorce case, saying he went above and beyond by lowering his fees and trying to find housing for the homeless client.

Las Vegas attorney John Naylor also filed a complaint, charging Whipple allowed an underling, who was not an attorney, to negotiate with him in a collections case. “Naylor stated that he never spoke with Respondent (Whipple) or received communication from Respondent, only a nonlawyer named Stephen Primak,” the complaint said.

Naylor declined comment when reached by the Review-Journal. Whipple said he was directing Primak during the whole negotiation but just wasn’t cced on a couple of emails. Whipple filed affidavits from his employees backing up his claims that there was no wrongdoing on his part.

This is the third time Whipple has faced bar discipline. In 2014, Whipple twice filed a document with substantial mistakes in a child custody case, a 2016 public reprimand shows.

In 2016, Whipple failed to file a motion in the correct court in a defamation case and did not respond to the clients request for documents, a 2018 public reprimand shows.

Whipple contends he acted appropriately in both cases, fighting the discipline based on the custody case to the state Supreme Court where he lost.

Whipple, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1987 with an accounting degree before going on to law school at the University of Arizona, was also put on probation by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy in 2019.

He had failed to get a required peer review of his auditing practice, said accountancy board executive director Viki A. Windfeldt. After about two years, Whipple complied with the requirement and was removed from probation on Nov. 22, 2020. “It’s serious and if he didn’t comply with his probation, we would revoke his license,” Windfeldt said in a phone interview.

Whipple said the audits didn’t make much money. “Have I overextended myself? Probably,” he said.

Bad blood

Whipple is aggressively fighting the bar and his former bookkeeper, Iacuaniello.

He touts the removal of Hooge from his disciplinary case as a victory.

Hooge was the district attorney in Whipple’s home county in 2017 when Hooge filed 225 criminal charges against a popular coach and principal for allegedly stealing from the school. Whipple, representing the coach, convinced a judge to dismiss the charges.

Hooge wrote a letter to the editor in the local paper criticizing Whipple and Whipple’s co-counsel for spreading false allegations about his prosecution, according to Whipple’s motion to disqualify Hooge. Whipple’s co-counsel filed a bar complaint against Hooge, but there was no disciplinary action.

Hooge, who after losing re-election as DA took the bar counsel job, said he stayed away from Whipple’s current discipline because of the prior conflict. “I haven’t had much involvement,” he said.

Dan R. Waite, chairman of the bar committee hearing Whipple’s case, ruled in October that there is no basis to disqualify Hooge but he would keep him away from the the case out of an “abundance of caution.”

Whipple also filed a civil lawsuit against Iacuaniello and lien against her father’s house, claiming she and her mother, who also worked for Whipple before she died, used his firm’s credit card for personal items. Iacuaniello’s mother also paid Iacuaniello even after she quit the law firm, the lawsuit claims.

Iacuaniello denied any wrongdoing in an interview and court filings. “He’s only doing this to get back at me for telling on him,” she said.

Whipple said there are no criminal charges against Iacuaniello because police consider it a civil matter since the company credit card she used was in her name.

High profile battles

In 2002, Whipple was elected a regent where he clashed with the chancellor who wanted a state tax to fund education. He was chairman of the board when it dealt with a high-profile cheating scandal at the UNLV dental school.

After one, six-year term as regent, Whipple was defeated by a political unknown, Robert Blakely. Whipple waited until the last minute in 2008 to file re-election papers so Blakely thought he could run unopposed.

When Whipple jumped in, Blakely worked the community, getting union endorsements, while Whipple thought his victory was guaranteed and did little campaigning, news stories show.

A shocked Whipple lost by 7 percentage points. Whipple also challenged city councilwoman Lois Tarkanian for regent this year, but lost by a 60-40 percent margin.

In what he calls the “trial of his life,” Whipple successfully got felony conspiracy and weapons charges against Cliven Bundy dismissed after the judge found “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” in failing to turn over evidence to the defense.

Whipple, who grew up in Lincoln County which has a population of about 5,000 people, said he has fought hard to make a career in Vegas and around the state and he will battle to keep his law license.

“Nobody is perfect and I always have places to improve but I have worked 20-plus years and had extraordinary results that are comparable to very few people in the community,” he said. “I’m not always right or wrong but for the most part I get great results for my clients.”

Contact Arthur Kane at akane@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ArthurMKane on Twitter. Kane is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.