1-17-23
David Pennell, serves as staff investigator for the Florida Bar Association and owns his own private Orlando investigation company. The Florida Bar is a state agency, appointed by the Florida Supreme Court to regulate the actions of attorneys. When the public believes an attorney has engaged in conduct that is harmful to the public, staff members at the Florida Bar determine whether or not they will pursue a complaint against an attorney. If staff from the Florida Bar pursues a complaint, it is turned over to local committees, to be investigated and decided whether there are grounds to find probable cause for the allegations within a complaint. This process is to remain confidential as it is investigated. And the investigator is supposed to thoroughly investigate from all sides.
After an investigation is completed, the staff investigator will produce a report for a local grievance committee if they feel there is enough evidence to prosecute the attorney. However, the investigator can also determine throughout an investigation that there is not enough evidence and advise to drop the complaint.
However, there have been problems with these types of local committees conducting the fate of attorneys based on choices they make throughout an investigation. Many local attorneys and investigators do business together, refer business, seek to work for various firms, etc… making it easy to ignore violations from some attorneys, while pursuing violations against others. It allows for the “Good Ole Boys Club” to remain intact. Hence, the reason the American Bar Association (ABA), advised state bars in their McKay Report to get rid of local committees and place investigations in the hands of a completely separate group of lawyers who have no leg in the game with the attorneys being investigated.https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/resources/report_archive/mckay_report/
David Pennell, has served as the staff investigator for the complaints that have been filed against Attorney Leslie Ferderigos over the past 2 years. David Pennell also owns his own private company named “Scotland Yard Investigations” operating in the Orlando Metro area, which is where Ferderigos resides and practices law. https://eintaxid.com/company/460676609-scotland-yard-investigations%2C-llc/
It is well known that Attorneys work with investigators on cases. Thus, having someone like Pennell, who does business locally with attorneys, to be the staff investigator for local attorneys during disciplinary investigations poses many questions regarding conflicts of interest and politics. Given that Pennell has the ability to conduct his investigations as he sees fit, poses another issue. Again, one of the main reasons, the ABA recommended for states to get rid of their local disciplinary committees and place these investigations within a group of regulatory lawyers with no interest or potential conflict of interest, was to ensure attorneys were getting properly investigated and politics and connections was not the driving force on who to pursue discipline against and who to ignore.
Ferderigos has been a victim of a confirmed criminal conspiracy and criminal extortion, where she was intentionally extorted by her former paralegal, 2 former clients, and opposing counsel in a guardianship case, that Ferderigos successfully restored the rights of a ward. Part of the threats of extortion, involved the perpetrators filing bar complaints against Ferderigos for the purpose of destroying her career and distributing attorney-client privileged information across the courts of Florida. There is a criminal case pending in the 9th Judicial Circuit of the State Attorney’s office and there has been confirmation the prosecutor has enough evidence to prosecute. Thus, it is concerning that Pennell failed to entertain any evidence Ferderigos supplied him and failed to placed it in his report.
Since the onset of the investigation, Ferderigos has maintained her position that these Bar complaints were made in bad faith and part of a criminal extortion scheme against Ferderigos. She supplied voluminous amounts of evidence to Pennell to investigate, which can be viewed in the following screenshare videos. After watching these videos, it is clear that Ferderigos and the 9th Circuit State Attorney’s Office have all the evidence they need to prosecute for criminal extortion and criminal conspiracy.
However, Pennell failed to consider Ferderigos’ evidence during his investigations. What is concerning is Pennell does not provide this evidence within his reports against Ferderigos to the grievance committee, who decides whether or not to find probable cause to file a formal complaint.
One would think, with Pennell’s background as a trained criminal defense investigator, Former special agent, and former police officer, that Pennell surely would have considered how strong this evidence is to Ferderigos position. The evidence is made up of clear written statements of extortion with promises to carry out filing bar complaints against Ferderigos if un-owed money was not turned over within 3-days, murder threats made against Ferderigos children, offers to represent Ferderigos’ clients for free if they went against Ferderigos, among much more. Furthermore, various witnesses offered affidavits after being solicited to file bar complaints against Ferderigos and to join the conspirators in their plan to destroy Ferderigos.
One of many affidavits provided by witnesses and turned over to Pennell
Despite the voluminous amount of evidence Ferderigos had supplied to Pennell, he continued to ignore it and wrote reports against her without providing any of her evidence to the grievance committee.
It is important to note, the Florida Bar specifically states, investigations of complaints go beyond the words and seek the totality of the circumstances. as stated in the link below. If this is the case how could the Florida Bar ignore Ferderigos’ evidence about the motivation behind these complaints?
He even allowed the perpetrators to reference him throughout their social media discrimination campaign meant to harm Ferderigos during this confidential investigation. Ferderigos begged him to have his name taken off the discriminatory and defamatory statements being made about Ferderigos. However, he chose to ignore Ferderigos requests.
The most concerning action taken by Pennell, was attempting to extort statements from her husband, as an effort to obtain evidence against Ferderigos. Ferderigos’ husband is a 20 year practicing attorney with no disciplinary record. One of the conspirators, whom had never been a client of her husband nor even spoke to her husband, wrote a bar complaint against her husband in furtherance of the harassment against Ferderigos. During a phone conversation between Pennell and Ferderigos’ husband, Pennell stated her husband’s complaint would have been dropped had he not been married to Ferderigos. During this call and weeks later, Pennell continued to pressure Ferderigos’ husband to supply an affidavit against Ferderigos in exchange for dropping his complaint.
After 2 years of enduring extreme harassment, retaliation, threats of murder, among much more, Ferderigos took a stance and contacted superiors within the Florida Bar Association to expose what was going on. She received a message from a Judge and former prosecutor who reviewed her evidence and told her he had never seen anything like this and was extremely concerned for what was happening to Ferderigos. He also told her that after reviewing her evidence, he was surprised at how much solid evidence she had.
During this time, Ferderigos had forwarded documents against Pennell, stating the activity Pennell engaged in during his investigation of Ferderigos. She placed tracking on all her emails, realizing she would have to do her own investigation to find out the motive behind why this type of investigation was allowed to take place.
Ferderigos was shocked to discover that Pennell is forwarding everything to various cities across the country. Ferderigos questions, is there something bigger going on here. One document was sent to 13 different readers from various cities across the country.
Ferderigos has also been in contact with other attorneys who helped free wards from guardianships, who also had Pennell assigned to investigate their case. And it appears that he is doing the same types of biased investigations with more attorneys then Ferderigos. One attorney in particular had practiced law for years with no discipline record. After she took on her first guardianship case where she advocated to restore rights to the ward, she also became target of attack. Pennell appears to be treating other attorney’s case in the same manner he has treated Ferderigos’ case. Ferderigos intends to report his violations to the Florida Association of Licensed Investigators, whom he is a member of and is supposed to uphold to his own ethical rules.
In early 2020, prior to any investigation or bar complaint, Ferderigos was made aware by various clients and her paralegal that an anonymous investigator had contacted them to find out information about Ferderigos. This was before any Bar Complaints were filed and shortly after her success in restoring rights to guardians. Ferderigos does not have evidence of who this investigator was because the investigator refused to give anyone his name when making these phone calls. Upon finding this information out, Ferderigos became concerned because she has had no history of engaging in anything that would warrant an investigator looking into her. During 2020, Ferderigos was featured for her success in restoring the rights of wards in guardianships during various ABC and NBC news articles. Ferderigos believes her exposure in the news prompted those who felt threatened by her guardianship advocation efforts to start to seek out who she is
Ferderigos was also contacted by a client, who stated that when he called ACAP with the Florida Bar to address an issue and told them his attorney was Ferderigos, that the intake staff stated to him that Ferderigos has voluminous bar complaints and further proceeded to encourage him to file a bar complaint against Ferderigos. This Florida Bar staff member even specified and directed him to the best time to file to make the most impact. Upon discovering this, Ferderigos immediately contacted the Florida bar and was advised the proper way to address this was to file a bar complaint against this staff member, however her bar complaint was dropped against this staff member immediately, despite her client’s willingness to give sworn statements.
Ferderigos has now filed complaints with the FBI, Department of Justice, Inspector General Office, Attorney Generals Office, and brought forth everything to the Florida Bar Board of Governors in hopes to have this concerning investigation investigated deeper.
With someone who has as much experience as Pennell has, he could not have been ignorant to what was happening to Ferderigos. It is absolutely clear from the voluminous evidence Ferderigos turned over during her investigation.
Ferderigos filed an Emergency Motion to have Pennell Disqualified from her case, which is pending before the Court.
Ferderigos was warned by activist groups fighting for change in the court system regarding guardianships, that once Ferderigos went against the Elder Law Attorneys and fought to restore the rights of the wards, she would become their target. We have confirmed with evidence that Kyle Fletcher, Esq., guardianship attorney has targeted her and taken measure to destroy Ferderigos career, including offering free legal services to those who goes against Ferderigos. We also have evidence of Elder Law Attorney in counties all across the state of Florida who have also targeted Ferderigos, through filings in the court and other mechanisms that will be exposed later.
Ferderigos has suffered immense emotional trauma from having to deal with this type of targeted attacked against her for 2 years, during what was supposed to be a confidential investigation. This confidential investigation clearly did not remain confidential because the motive of these Bar Complaints was to publicly publish them with the intent to humiliate, defame Ferderigos, and harm her clients. Her reputation in the legal community and the public has been ruined. She has been treated so badly from Judges and other attorneys, that one Judge was forced to recuse herself from Ferderigos case. Her once growing law firm has shut down and Ferderigos has had to withdraw from her cases due to her mental health decline that was a direct result of this trauma. This investigation has harmed her beyond repair and Ferderigos does not know if she will ever recover from the damage it has caused her. Ferderigos states “No confidential investigation should damage an attorney to this point. The Florida Bar really needs to take a serious look at reforming their disciplinary process.”
It is important to note, the Florida Bar still has all Bar Complaints against Ferderigos and her Husband actively pending with this knowledge and evidence negating the allegations and showing the criminal intent behind them.
The Investigative Reporter 