A disbarred Manhattan Beach solo practitioner has pleaded guilty to felony theft after prosecutors say he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to his own clients at the gambling tables — capping a case that State Bar disciplinary officials had already called an “unrelenting” pattern of deceit. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced that Sergio Valdovinos Ramirez, 36, pleaded guilty July 20, 2026 to three felony counts of grand theft by embezzlement and one felony count of writing checks against insufficient funds, along with a special allegation that his crimes caused losses of $100,000 or more.

Under his plea agreement, Valdovinos Ramirez must pay $50,000 before his September 21 sentencing in Department 123 of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center and owes at least $310,000 in total restitution; prosecutors say he is expected to receive a two-year state prison sentence. “The defendant duped and deceived his clients of funds that were earmarked for them only to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars of these funds gambling,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman said, adding that the case was “a house of cards” that collapsed once law enforcement and the State Bar caught on. The case, prosecuted by Deputy District Attorneys Daniel Akemon and Holly Harpham of the office’s Justice System Integrity Division, was investigated jointly by the California State Bar, the Manhattan Beach Police Department, and the DA’s own Bureau of Investigation.

The criminal case traces conduct between 2019 and 2023, years before Valdovinos Ramirez, admitted to the California bar in 2017, was disbarred. According to contemporaneous reporting, one client, Lisa Mendez, said she paid him roughly $4,350 in fees in 2019 before he fabricated a settlement in her case and handed her checks worth more than $150,000 drawn on accounts with near-zero balances. Other former clients reported similar patterns: thousands of dollars paid up front, work never performed to their satisfaction, and refunds attempted only through checks that bounced because the underlying accounts held little or no money. Investigators found that Valdovinos Ramirez routinely deposited client funds into personal or non-trust accounts before spending portions of the money on personal expenses, including gambling.

The criminal case followed directly from a State Bar Court disciplinary proceeding that, if anything, paints an even starker picture. In a June 2024 opinion, the State Bar Court’s Review Department upheld a hearing judge’s finding that Valdovinos Ramirez was culpable on all 19 counts of misconduct charged across five separate client matters, including moral turpitude for misappropriation and misrepresentation, writing checks against insufficient funds, failing to deposit client funds into a trust account as required by rule 1.15(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct, and failing to keep a client reasonably informed of significant case developments. The Review Department found his misappropriation of client funds “unrelenting,” noting that he would often deplete his bank accounts of entrusted funds almost as soon as he received them.

Individual allegations detailed in State Bar filings, as reported by the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, describe a pattern extending well beyond simple neglect. One client paid Valdovinos Ramirez $73,965 in advance fees to handle a conservatorship matter; the State Bar Court found he misappropriated the entire amount. Another client hired him to pursue an employment discrimination case, but Valdovinos Ramirez never actually filed suit, instead giving his client a fabricated case number and later falsely claiming the case had settled for $58,000 — a claim he backed up with checks written against accounts that could not cover them. Perhaps most strikingly, Valdovinos Ramirez attempted to excuse his delays, both with clients and in his own disciplinary proceedings, by claiming he was undergoing treatment for terminal cancer under a Dr. Stephen Chang at City of Hope. An investigation by the State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel found no such treatment had occurred and that no doctor by that name worked at the cancer center at all. Then-Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said disbarment was “entirely appropriate,” noting that Valdovinos Ramirez “showed no remorse and lied about a life-threatening illness” rather than take responsibility.

The California Supreme Court formally ordered Valdovinos Ramirez disbarred effective October 2024, adopting the State Bar’s recommendation along with an order that he pay restitution to five former clients, plus 10% annual interest, and $5,000 in monetary sanctions to the State Bar itself.

For clients of any California attorney who experiences theft or comparable dishonest conduct, the State Bar’s Client Security Fund offers a separate, non-adversarial avenue for partial recovery, independent of any restitution ordered in a criminal or disciplinary case. The fund, financed entirely through mandatory annual assessments on active California attorneys, can reimburse up to $100,000 per claim for losses caused by an attorney’s theft, misappropriation, or comparable dishonest conduct, including a failure to refund fees for work never performed. It does not cover ordinary malpractice or negligence, and applicants generally must file within four years of discovering the loss. Given the number of former clients implicated in the Valdovinos Ramirez matter, the fund may end up bearing a meaningful share of the loss the criminal restitution order does not ultimately recover.

This summary is provided for general informational purposes only. Statements attributed to prosecutors, State Bar officials, and news reporting reflect their own characterizations of the underlying conduct; a criminal defendant’s guilty plea establishes the specific counts admitted but does not itself resolve every disputed factual allegation referenced in related civil or disciplinary proceedings.