Aubrey Hunter was in a courtroom, on the stand to testify against his attorney, when he found out exactly how much money he was supposed to get. It was $557,000. Life-changing money. And he never received it.

Hunter is a hospital maintenance worker who was in a head-on accident in 2007, his Ford F-150 colliding with a Yukon Denali driven by a mother of two teenagers. He was coming home from his parents’ house. She was coming from a 4H function with three children in the car.

The woman died not long after the accident. The children were injured. Hunter shattered his heel and ankle, having hit the breaks so hard that he snapped the pedal off. He spent weeks in the hospital, and had multiple reconstructive surgeries in the coming months. It was a painful recovery. He also saw a therapist for recurring nightmares.

“I was reliving that tragedy over and over in my head,” he said. 

The lawyer had worked with him in the past, had represented family and friends in other car accidents and came to see him in the hospital, Hunter said. She signed him as a client with a 33% contingency agreement and estimated that he might get $250,000 in settlement money.

He got $12,000 from the insurance company for his totalled pickup. But the case dragged on. Months turned to years. Once, she gave him $5,000, when he was badly in need of money, Hunter said. She styled it as a loan.

He checked in by phone and text. Sometimes, she ignored him. Sometimes, she made excuses. Never did she mention a settlement had taken place, Hunter said. Then, a friend showed him a news story saying she was being prosecuted for fraud. The lawyer told Aubrey she was fighting the charges. 

“She said it was fake news, that I should not believe it and that she would never do that to me,” Hunter said.

As the lawyer’s case unfolded, revealing millions of dollars in fraud impacting dozens of clients, Hunter spoke out at sentencing in the federal case. After surviving a motion to quash his testimony, he did the same in the state case, and heard from a prosecutor on the stand just how much he lost. It was the first time he heard the number.

“It’s hard. I’ve learned to live with it. It’s life,” he said. But he did add that, “I was livid.”

Eventually, many years after the accident, Hunter received $50,000 from the Oregon Bar Association. But it was cold comfort amid tales of the lawyer’s lavish spending, from poker tournaments in Las Vegas to a hunting big game in Africa. 

“Those first class tickets were bought on my ankle pain, the hurt I went through and some of the guilt I felt because I was part of someone’s death,” he said.

Now 56 and taking care of his aging parents, Hunter has built a happy life, but he knows it could have been different.

“I was devastated by that — $557,000 could have bought me a house,” he said. “I could have given it to my financial advisor … In seven years, we would have doubled it. I could be retired.”