Email Scam Ensnarls Dallas Lawyer and Houston Bank

by Jessica Huseman, Staff Writer 

DECEMBER 19 — The State Bar of Texas and the Texas Department of Banking issued dozens of notices during the past few years about scams that target lawyers and financial institutions.

Despite those warnings, Houston-based Prosperity Bank and Dallas family lawyer J. Durrell Padgitt are pointing fingers of blame at each other in a $300,000 dispute over who is most responsible for losses incurred when the attorney fell for an international fraud scheme perpetrated in the spring of 2010. The case is quickly becoming the poster child for what can go wrong when the warnings are not heeded.