Edgartown attorney Edward W. Vincent Jr. today was placed on two years administrative probation and ordered to perform 100 hours community service after he admitted to sufficient facts on two larceny over $250 charges.
Standing alongside his attorney in Edgartown district court, Mr. Vincent entered the plea on the two charges, which will be continued without a finding. He was also ordered to pay a $50 monthly probation fee and a $90 victim witness fee.
Two additional charges of fiduciary embezzlement were dismissed.
The cases involved about $190,000 owed to the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for the sale of a building and more than $400,000 from another real estate transaction. Two civil lawsuits filed against Mr. Vincent were dismissed when the money was paid back earlier this year.
Edgartown district court Judge H. Gregory Williams noted that Mr. Vincent has “absolutely no criminal record,” but made a point of adding that he did not further public perception that lawyers are members of an “honorable profession.”
“This doesn’t help,” the judge said. “I don’t care if it’s one time, two times, a lifetime. It doesn’t matter.”
Robert Jubinville, Mr. Vincent’s lawyer, said that just as the criminal cases were filed earlier this year, Mr. Vincent was in the middle of negotiations in which “everybody has been made whole.”
He noted that Mr. Vincent is a lifelong resident of the Island and has a record of extensive public service. That includes membership on several town boards, the town’s representative to the MVTV board and elected member of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission.
“He has certainly suffered a great deal for his actions,” Mr. Jubinville said. “He admitted and takes responsibility for that episode.” Mr. Vincent’s license to practice law in Massachusetts was suspended earlier this year, but he hopes to eventually regain it, he said.
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