She Says Her Lawyer Stole Her Money. She Can’t Get the DA to Return Her Calls.

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When Pamela Brown found out that her lawyer had been indicted for stealing money from her other clients, she became worried that she, too, had been robbed.

Brown had been required to deposit more than $53,000 in an escrow bank account controlled by the attorney, Daphna Zekaria. Brown asked Zekaria to prove the money was still in the account and return it. The lawyer never responded.

In May, following a criminal investigation by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, Zekaria pleaded guilty to robbing nearly $400,000 from three other clients, stealing escrow funds in two instances and performing no legal work despite charging a significant fee in another. Zekaria has been disbarred and will face six years in prison if she doesn’t pay restitution by next May.

Brown has plenty of evidence indicating that her $53,000 went into a bank account controlled by Zekaria, including wire transfer confirmation emails, a court order, and an attorney contract. But she hasn’t gotten her money back.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which has jurisdiction over Brown’s case, appears to have largely ignored her complaints. (In response to questions for this article, a spokesperson for the office told New York Focus on Thursday that it would reexamine the case.)

And the state agency responsible for compensating victims of attorney theft, the Lawyer’s Fund for Client Protection, rejected her claim — in part because Bragg’s office didn’t investigate it.

It’s not just Brown who has faced rejection. She believes numerous other alleged Zekaria victims have been ignored by Bragg’s office and had their claims dismissed by the Fund.

The ordeal has had “a huge financial effect, but it’s also had an emotional effect,” Brown told New York. “It leaves you with a sense of, ‘How do we trust the system?’ ”

Brown, a 56-year-old social scientist and former owner of a wellness studio, has lived since 2005 in an apartment building in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood with her husband, a chiropractor.

In 2017, Brown and her neighbors were contesting bills from their landlord for improvements, like the installation of an elevator, that had not actually been made. A friend referred Brown to Zekaria, and she hired the attorney to represent her in the dispute.

Zekaria had a somewhat unusual business model. Instead of charging by the hour, she would charge a large upfront fee and then handle a case for its duration. In Brown’s case, she charged a $15,000 fee to cover lawsuits in State Supreme and Housing courts.

In 2017, Brown agreed to put more than $53,000 into an escrow account held by Zekaria’s firm, Sokolski & Zekaria P.C. The money was to cover the rent Brown was withholding from her landlord during the legal dispute.

Zekaria was indicted by a grand jury in late 2023. Several months later, Brown emailed her to ask for the money back, but got no response.

New York Focus reached out to Zekaria and asked about Brown’s allegation that the lawyer had stolen $53,000 in escrow funds.

“No, not at all,” Zekaria said in a brief phone conversation. “And I have no comment, obviously.”

After being asked where the $53,000 had gone, Zekaria hung up.

In 2024, Brown contacted the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, which had conducted the investigation that led to Zekaria’s indictment. As part of its investigation, the office had reviewed Zekaria’s bank records back to 2020. The office told Brown that the $53,000 had been missing from Zekaria’s account since at least 2020.

Several years ago, Zekaria moved her law office from Manhattan to Suffolk County. A Suffolk County prosecutor told Brown to contact the district attorney in Manhattan, since that’s where Zekaria’s firm was headquartered when the escrow transaction occurred.

Brown provided New York Focus five emails she’d sent to the Manhattan district attorney’s office over two months in early 2024. Brown also placed approximately a dozen phone calls, she said.

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She got one call back in February 2024 from an assistant district attorney, who left a voicemail saying he wished to discuss the matter. But he never subsequently returned any calls, Brown said, and she never spoke to any prosecutor in the office.

If Bragg’s office had promptly subpoenaed records from Zekaria’s escrow account, Brown believes a record of the 2017 escrow account deposit could have been retrieved. Instead, she says, the bank’s seven-year window for retrieving records elapsed, and she has no bank record showing Zekaria received the money.

After Zekaria was disbarred, the court appointed a receiver, David Commender, to examine Zekaria’s files and take actions necessary to protect the interests of her former clients.

In an email late last year, Commender told Brown he’d been in contact with about a dozen of Zekaria’s former clients.

“The complaints range from theft of funds to malfeasance to just not turning over their files,” Commender wrote, adding that he’d spoken to a Suffolk County assistant district attorney who said she’d been “contacted by about 30 people.”

Based on their conversations, Brown believes Commender sought to contact the Manhattan district attorney on behalf of many Manhattan victims, but was similarly stonewalled by the office.

Commender declined to comment. But in an email to Brown late last year, Commender made his feelings clear: “The silence from the Manhattan DA continues to be deafening,” he wrote.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office told New York Focus that the office takes “financial fraud in Manhattan, especially misconduct by attorneys, very seriously, and we had been in touch with other jurisdictions regarding complaints about Ms. Zakaria.”

Bragg’s office plans to re-review Brown’s complaint to see if any aspects are “actionable,” the spokesperson said.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office suggested a second recourse for Zekaria’s clients.

The Lawyer’s Fund for Client Protection is an independent public trust meant to help maintain public confidence in the legal profession. It has reimbursed almost $270 million to victims of lawyers’ theft since it was created through state legislation in 1981. By the end of last year, the Fund had reimbursed a total of two Zekaria clients, according to its annual reports.

“We think we do great work,” said Eric Seiff, the Fund’s chairman. “My sense is that we are the national leader here in New York.”

The Fund is administered by a seven-person board appointed by the judges of the Court of Appeals. It receives no public funding; instead, it’s primarily financed through a registration fee charged to every practicing New York attorney. Most of its operations are conducted confidentially.

Fourteen months ago, Brown submitted a claim to the Fund seeking reimbursement for over $90,000. The Fund denied her claim in June, determining that she had “failed to provide satisfactory documentary proof of payment” for the $53,000 payment to Zekaria.

While Brown is unable to obtain bank records of the transactions, she has considerable evidence of the payment.

A 2017 court agreement required the $53,000 to be placed in Zekaria’s escrow account. Brown has 2017 emails from her bank stating that she’d scheduled online wire transfers to Zekaria’s firm for that amount. A housing court order that year stated that Zekaria “represents that she is holding $53,577.50 in escrow.” A 2019 retainer agreement between Brown and Zekaria again referred to the escrow funds. And, according to Brown, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office has confirmed that the funds were missing from Zekaria’s account by 2020.

In rejecting the claim, the Fund also cited the fact that “no criminal or disciplinary determination” had confirmed Brown’s allegations against Zekaria.

The Fund itself has subpoena power. But it has a small staff and generally relies on findings from a District Attorney’s office or an Attorney Grievance Committee to prove dishonest conduct.

“We have a staff of two attorneys, and so out of necessity, we have relied on either a DA’s office or a disciplinary committee as the main source of information for proving the dishonest conduct,” Seiff said. “I either don’t know, or don’t remember, why the Manhattan [district attorney] office disappeared — but they did.”

“I think that if we had any kind of document to confirm that the money was received in Zekaria’s escrow account, it would make it a different story,” Seiff said.

The spokesperson for the Manhattan DA’s office told New York Focus that the office “will follow up with the Lawyers Fund regarding the complaint.”

In 2024, the Fund approved about 26 percent of claims, paying out $11.6 million. Claimants had alleged losses that year of $54.7 million — nearly five times the amount that was paid out. The Fund ended the year with a $11.7 million balance.

Asked if the Fund faced fiscal constraints that required rejecting a certain number of claims, Seiff said that “we try to be careful. We don’t want to overspend, but we would like to recompense the victims to the extent of their loss, to the extent we can.”

“I don’t care if we pay out 30 percent of the claims or 70 percent of the claims,” Seiff continued. “I just want to know that each claim is being given appropriate attention.”

The Fund’s determination gave Brown the chance to reapply for the $53,000. She did so, and hopes the Fund will reverse course at its next quarterly meeting, which is being held today.

Several of Zekaria’s former clients are seeking compensation for a second reason: They say the attorney stole legal fees from them. The Fund appears to have repeatedly dismissed these claims, too.

According to Brown, the court-appointed receiver approached the Fund’s former executive director on behalf of multiple alleged Zekaria victims, but was given a “hard no.”

The Fund’s regulations stipulate that if an attorney falsely promises to provide legal services in exchange for an advance fee, clients can be reimbursed for the “dishonest conduct.”

In Brown’s case, Zekaria received a $15,000 retainer fee to file the Supreme Court case. The law firm did some work, but also allegedly missed court appearances and deadlines, earning a reprimand from the judge, who cited the “history of plaintiffs’ non-compliance with court mandated orders.” Citing a “woefully deficient” legal filing, the judge precluded Brown’s side from pursuing a number of key claims against her landlord.

Brown and her husband paid Zekaria an additional $12,500 in 2019 to file a lawsuit seeking for the escrow funds to be released. But Zekaria never filed it, according to Brown.

In a letter to the Fund seeking a $37,500 reimbursement for these and other fees, Brown argued that Zekaria’s inaction was likely a deliberate effort to avoid resolving the cases — which would have revealed that the $53,000 in escrow funds were missing. “They were the actions of someone who could not afford to let the truth come to light,” Brown wrote.

The Fund’s commissioners denied Brown’s claim, finding that Zekaria had provided her with “more than minimal legal services.”

Other Zekaria clients have also alleged that the attorney charged them sizable upfront fees and then largely abandoned their cases.

In Suffolk County, Zekaria performed no legal work for an elderly woman who had paid her $17,500 to contest eviction proceedings, according to the lawyer’s guilty plea this year.

In Manhattan, a man named Ike Ude paid Zekaria’s law firm $18,000 to fight the deregulation of his rent-stabilized apartment — but his lawsuit was tossed out after Zekaria allegedly failed to respond to the opposing party’s motion seeking dismissal of the case. (Ude is suing Zekaria for malpractice.)

In Brooklyn, Stephen Paul told New York Focus that he paid Zekaria $25,000 to contest a decision by the city Department of Buildings to shut down his art studio business. Zekaria repeatedly missed court appearances, Paul said, and he ultimately lost his case.

After the attorney’s indictment, Paul approached the Fund for compensation. A Fund staff member told Paul that “they couldn’t do anything for me,” he recalled.

Zekaria did agree to repay one higher-profile client. Celebrity makeup artist Erin Parsons paid Zekaria $25,000 to handle legal claims over water leaks in her Manhattan office. The attorney failed to ever file a lawsuit, Parsons alleged. After Parsons sued her former lawyer, Zekaria’s firm agreed to pay $22,000 back to Parsons.

Asked about this pattern of allegedly abandoned cases, Seiff said New York Focus had raised “good questions” and encouraged a reporter to contact the Fund’s executive director for further comment.

The Fund’s executive director, Gabe Huertas, did not respond to a request for comment.