A Florida attorney accused of stealing from his family’s trust fund is now facing murder charges in connection with his father’s death.
Brandon Labiner, 34, was charged Monday with first-degree murder with a firearm in the death of his father, attorney Paul Labiner. According to a report, Boca Raton police found Labiner’s body in the building where his law office operated press release by the Boca Raton Police Department. Brandon Labiner has yet to file a plea and his attorney did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The elderly Labiner, 68, was found in a pool of blood in the stairwell of the building’s parking garage on Saturday, according to a heavily redacted probable cause statement obtained by HuffPost. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to police, he suffered four gunshot wounds, one in the upper chest, two in the lower body and another in the head.
Video surveillance from inside the parking garage shows a man riding a bicycle, pulling a gun from a drawstring backpack and confronting the victim in a “brawl” before exiting the frame, authorities said.
The next day, police located Brandon Labiner. He was barricaded in a building about five kilometers from the scene of the crime.
Labiner, who had an active arrest warrant for drunk driving in another county, was taken into custody without incident after crisis negotiators spoke to his lawyer.
During a search of his office, investigators found a drawstring backpack, a bicycle that matched that seen in surveillance footage, and a gun that matched the gun used to kill Paul Labiner, police said.
According to court documents filed with the Florida State Bar, Brandon Labiner was a personal injury attorney before his license to practice law was revoked in April. He had worked in his father’s law firm in the past, and his father filed a lawsuit alleging that he embezzled funds and altered documents.
Labiner is accused of stealing nearly $450,000 from his family’s trust fund between June and August 2022, allegedly by forging bank documents to make it appear that his father illegally transferred the money to the law firm’s account.
Paul Labiner also filed a lawsuit against his son for allegedly stealing from the trust. according to WPTV.
According to WPTV, the 2022 lawsuit alleged that Brandon Labiner injured his father in a physical altercation at the law firm.
“Brandon’s poor work ethic and underperformance as a plaintiff’s attorney caused the caseload to drop drastically, leaving only a handful of viable cases in the plaintiff’s view,” the lawsuit said.
Brandon Labiner appeared in court on Monday. He was ordered to be held without bond and told not to have any contact with the victim’s family, which are also his own family, according to WPTV reported.
