The State : Embezzlement Counts Filed

Former U.S. Bankruptcy Court Trustee Charles Duck was arraigned on charges of embezzling $1.9 million while acting as trustee for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. Duck, an attorney and a bankruptcy trustee in Santa Rosa for 17 years before resigning in May, and one of the most prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area, appeared before U.S. District Magistrate F. Steel Langford in San Francisco. He returns to court Oct. 6. Bankruptcy Court Clerk Paul Karney told the U.S. attorney’s office that a review of documents in about 100 pending Chapter 11 cases handled by Duck showed that he repeatedly failed to get court approval for hiring and paying employees; that he billed debtors for thousands of dollars in expenses that probably should have come from his salary, and that his slowness in closing cases reduced payments to creditors.