Suspended Charleroi attorney pleads guilty to stealing from elderly client

Suspended Charleroi attorney Keith A. Bassi pleaded guilty Monday to charges stemming from allegations he stole more than $500,000 from an elderly client suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and funneled some of it into the accounts of a Mon Valley newspaper.
Federal prosecutors said Bassi, 61, stole money from a client identified in court records only as “N.J.L.” beginning in 2013. The victim was diagnosed with the illnesses and determined to be mentally incompetent early the previous year, according to a bill of information filed in the case.
District Judge Arthur J. Schwab accepted guilty pleas from Bassi to three counts of felony mail fraud and set a sentencing hearing for March 14.
A cousin of N.J.L.’s who is seeking to become her guardian attended the hearing. He asked that neither he nor the victim, 85, be identified while the petition is pending in Orphan’s Court.
“What can I say?” he said after Monday’s hearing. “It’s certainly despicable.”
Bassi spoke in court only to answer Schwab’s questions about whether he understood his rights and understood his actions in entering the pleas.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Melucci said Bassi took a total of roughly $505,000 from the client for his own use. That included putting $110,000 into accounts related to the Mon Valley Independent in Monessen, a newspaper he co-owns. Bassi told investigators who confronted him in May he was “motivated to use N.J.L.’s assets for himself” because of “financial issues,” Melucci told the judge.
A power of attorney executed by N.J.L. gave Bassi permission to authorize the spending of money for her “material care, investments and compensation for services rendered,” the prosecution stated in the record. She has been in the dementia unit of a care facility since 2015 and has no close living family members.
N.J.L.’s cousin said in a letter to Schwab that relatives suspect Bassi may have been responsible for additional possessions of hers being “sold or given away or maybe even sent into trash somewhere.”
The prosecution also said he used the woman’s money to pay premiums on a $1.2 million life insurance policy on himself, with death benefits going to a person identified only as B.B., who is not a defendant, according to the record signed by Acting U.S. Attorney Soo Song. In September 2016, Bassi filed a “surrender request” for the policy and received a check from the insurance company for $163,086, which he deposited into his money market account, prosecutors said.
Bassi, who lives in Jefferson Township, Fayette County, hasn’t practiced law at Bassi, Vreeland and Associates, the Charleroi firm where he was formerly a partner, since June, the state Supreme Court said in August when it announced his suspension. The temporary suspension became effective Sept. 15, and there has been no further action by that court regarding Bassi’s status.
The prosecution also said Bassi deposited $74,876 of the woman’s money into his personal checking account at CFS between November 2013 and May 2014. Another $136,473 was stolen from her in July 2016 and deposited into his savings account, the prosecution alleges. Bassi was previously listed as general counsel for CFS, also based in Charleroi.
He also is accused of opening a money market account at a PNC branch in September 2016 with a deposit of $72,429 from the woman’s assets.
Bassi has agreed to pay restitution as part of the plea deal. He is expected to forfeit $235,515 held in his PNC money market account. The federal government also will seek a judgment in an amount to be determined by the court to settle the case, the record shows.
Stephen Stallings, Bassi’s attorney, said in court that he and the prosecution are still working out the exact amount of restitution Bassi owes because there is a “little bit of double counting” involving some of the money Bassi took from N.J.L.
Stallings declined comment following Monday’s proceeding.