United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
MEMORANDUM
C.
DARNELL JONES, II, J.
Plaintiff
Peter Anthony DeFeo brings this pro se civil action
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, against Robert B. Eyre,
Esquire, an attorney. (ECF No. 2.) He has also filed a Motion
for Leave to Proceed In Forma Pauperis. (ECF No. 1.)
For the following reasons, the Court will grant DeFeo leave
to proceed in forma pauperis and dismiss his
Complaint with prejudice.
I.
FACTS
DeFeo
used the Court's preprinted form Complaint. Therein, he
alleges that the events giving rise to his claim occurred on
October 31, 2017, though he also suggests that they took
place from 2010 through October 31, 2017. (ECF No. 2 at
3.)[1]
Rather than describing the events giving rise to his claim in
narrative form, he references a December 12, 2017 Media
Borough Police Department Complaint Report which purports to
reflect that, on that date, DeFeo called in a report that his
attorney had stolen money from him; the Report is attached to
the form Complaint. (Id. at 3, 6.) DeFeo also
references 23 additional pages of attachments to his form
Complaint. (Id. at 3, 7-29). In support of his
claim, DeFeo states only: "Media District Attorney lost
it 3 months later gave them a copy of same report, called and
took trips to the DA's Office. Horable [sic]
runaround." (Id. at 3.)
The
attachments to the Complaint appear to reflect a series of
financial transactions, specifically, disbursements from the
escrow account of Froehl & Eyre in late 2012. January 15,
2013 correspondence from Defendant Eyre to DeFeo (identified
as the Managing Member of Creek Road Funding, LLC) summarizes
the transactions as follows:
Dear
Peter:
You requested information concerning certain disbursements
made on behalf of Creek Road Funding, LLC ("Creek
Road") from our Escrow Account -specifically,
verification of the disbursements we made on behalf of Creek
Road from funds held in our CitiBank Escrow Account.
By way of background, as of August 6, 2012, we held $300, 000
in our Escrow Account for the benefit of Creek Road. Creek
Road desired to loan certain of these funds to Scimeca
Corporation.
A new account was opened at PNC Bank on August 8, 2012 with
the deposit of certified check in the amount of $250, 000
drawn on our CitiBank Escrow Account. A copy of the CitiBank
check and PNC deposit ticket are enclosed.
PNC would not allow Creek Road to write checks on those funds
in time for Creek Road to make a critical advance to Scimeca
to pay its secured creditor, Ciena. In order to fund that
payment, I wrote a separate check in the amount of $20, 000
from our Escrow Account payable to you, on August 9, 2012 and
delivered it that same morning to Scimeca's counsel,
Roger Ashodian, Esquire, at the United States Bankruptcy
Court in Philadelphia. A copy of this check is enclosed. I
understand it was used to make the payment to Ciena.
On August 16, 2012, per your instructions, I wrote a check in
the amount of $12, 409.33 payable to Creek Road, and
deposited it the same day in Creek Road's PNC account. I
understand this was to be used to fund an advance to Scimeca
to pay the legal fees of Roger Ashodian's firm on behalf
of Scimeca. A copy of that check is also enclosed.
Very truly yours,
Robert B. Eyre, Esquire
(Id. at 10-11.) The remainder of the attachments are
a series of e-mails dating to late 2012 which appear to
relate to the transactions described in the Eyre letter.
(See Id. at 12-29.) Handwritten notes appear on
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