Suspect can stay in Ky. until trial

The Baltimore Sun

Though she is accused of stealing more than $700,000 from her former employers at a Columbia law firm and prosecutors described her as a flight risk, Christine McClain-Sloan can continue to live in Kentucky until her January trial, a judge ruled yesterday in Howard County Circuit Court.

In a hearing, Judge Dennis M. Sweeney set bail at $75,000, asked McClain-Sloan to deposit $2,500 with the court clerk to cover any potential future extradition costs and told her she cannot leave Kentucky before her court dates. A motions hearing was set for Dec. 4 and a trial for Jan. 15, 2008.

Assistant State's Attorney Lynn Marshall, who says this may be the largest embezzlement case in the county's history, said in court that McClain-Sloan stole the money from Nagle and Zaller P.C., where she worked as an office manager, over the course of many years. After McClain-Sloan left the firm and moved to a horse farm in Kentucky, her former employers discovered the money missing. Prosecutors believe the funds have mostly been spent. McClain-Sloan used some of the money to make improvements to homes she owned in Maryland, Marshall said, and recently purchased a new home in a new subdivision in Kentucky.

McClain-Sloan's lawyer, Mike Epstein, successfully argued that his 41-year-old client should remain in Kentucky, where she lives with her husband and two children, ages 3 and 14. She does not have a prior criminal record, is receiving psychological care and prescription medication and wants to be close to her father, who is being treated for a brain tumor at a Kentucky hospital, Epstein said. Her willingness to drive to Maryland and turn herself in to the Howard County's Sheriff's yesterday is a testament to her trustworthiness, he said.

Though the grand jury indictment handed down last week was sealed, some additional details of the case were laid out in a civil lawsuit Nagle and Zaller filed against McClain-Sloan. That case also names her husband, her ex-husband and her two children as defendants, claiming that some of the embezzled funds were put into accounts under their names.

According to that lawsuit, Mc- Clain-Sloan worked at the firm from 1995 to 2005 and began stealing in 1996 by taking cash, using the business' credit cards for personal items and writing checks to herself, her relatives and various fictitious entities. The suit contends that she destroyed evidence, provided false financial information to the firm and blamed the firm's failure to thrive at various times on the partners' profligate spending and greed and employees' laziness.

She used the money, the suit says, for living expenses, property, property improvements and education trusts for her children. Though she started stealing relatively small amounts -- $906.37 in 1996 -- she grew increasingly bold, the suit says, embezzling $221,336.18 in 2004. All told, the suit accuses McClain-Sloan of taking $837,535.47. The plaintiff is asking for that amount in damages, in addition to costs incurred by the firm in pursuing the case.

"I trusted this woman with my life ... and she mentally tortured us for seven years," Craig Zaller, a partner in the law firm, said after the hearing.

rona.marech@baltsun.com

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