A Buyer Paid $19 Million Toward a $57.5 Million House. Her Lawyer Kept the Rest

• The client hired an attorney to buy a Forest Hills, Kingston property
• $19 million was paid over, leaving a $37.39 million shortfall
• No undertaking guaranteed the missing payment
• The disbarred attorney has promised repayment by early August

Disbarred attorney Ano Miller-Sewell, who reportedly misappropriated more than $37 million entrusted to her by a client in a failed real estate transaction, promised in a Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court mention to repay the outstanding amount by early August, more than a year after the underlying allegations first surfaced.

The transaction at the centre of the case involved a property on Red Hills Road, Forest Hills, Kingston 19, priced at $57.5 million. The complainant formally engaged Miller-Sewell on January 10, 2024, and a month later entered an agreement for sale requiring a $5.75 million deposit, with the $51.75 million balance and the purchaser’s share of costs due within 60 days. Instead, approximately $19 million was reportedly paid over, leaving a shortfall of roughly $37.39 million, with no undertaking ever provided to guarantee the outstanding payment to the vendor.

Attorney Matthew Hyatt, representing Miller-Sewell alongside King’s Counsel Bert Samuels, told Parish Judge Sanchia Burrell his client intended within short order to restore the complainant to her former financial position, specifying early August as the repayment date when pressed. The judge was unimpressed with the pace of the proceedings regardless, observing it had taken an inordinately long time for the complainant to be repaid.

Miller-Sewell was arrested and charged last year with fraudulent conversion and possession of criminal property, with the matter subsequently adjourned to November for mention and her bail extended in the interim. For a client who engaged an attorney specifically to protect her interests in a real estate purchase, the case illustrates a risk this publication has documented repeatedly: the professional meant to safeguard a transaction’s funds becoming, instead, the source of the loss.

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