Lawyer Linked With Financial Collapses Turns Gun on Self : Attorney Linked With Collapse of Florida Securities Firm, Ohio Bank Takes Own Life

Stephen Arky, a senior partner in a prominent Miami law firm who had been linked with the collapsed ESM Government Securities Inc. and the resulting Ohio banking crisis, killed himself in his home, police said Tuesday.

A police statement said Arky, 42, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head Monday morning at his home in suburban Coral Gables. He was the son-in-law of Cincinnati financier Marvin Warner, who controlled Home State Savings Bank in Ohio.

Home State closed earlier this year after a run by depositors alarmed over disclosures of the bank’s substantial investments with ESM, of Fort Lauderdale, which collapsed March 4. Arky, an investor in ESM, was accused in a report by Thomas Tew, ESM’s court-appointed receiver, of closing his account and withdrawing $2 million before ESM’s collapse.