Federal agents have seized a local attorney’s business records dating back nearly a decade as part of an investigation into allegations of systematic fraud and theft in north Snohomish County and elsewhere.
FBI agents searched an Arlington storage unit Thursday and seized records maintained by Mickie Jarvill, 56, and her husband, Michael Jarvill, 55. They also obtained a search warrant for the leased waterfront home the couple share on Camano Island.
Among other things, the agents were looking for evidence of alleged mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, aiding and abetting and conspiracy, according to documents filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
No charges have been filed. Calls to the Jarvills’ home went unanswered Friday. The Jarvills’ legal troubles were first profiled last summer in The Herald.
The FBI’s investigation has “principally focused on allegations relating to three specific frauds perpetrated by Mickie Jarvill and her husband, Michael Jarvill,” FBI agent Mike Peffer said in an affidavit filed in support of the search warrants.
The legal papers were the latest indication of troubles for Mickie Jarvill, who was once prominent in land development issues around Smokey Point, where she formerly operated a law practice.
Court papers show the FBI investigation is probing allegations that:
• Mickie Jarvill took more than $350,000 from investors to purchase land in Lake Stevens that instead wound up being owned by somebody else. The situation was detected only after investors became suspicious, discovered a developer working on the property and then learned the ownership papers Jarvill had supplied apparently were forged.
• The Jarvills from the fall of 1993 through the spring of 1994 convinced at least three investors to put up money for their Smokey Point office condominium, including an elderly Arlington dairy farmer who was dying of leukemia. In one investment case, Mickie Jarvill allegedly took $60,000 from a legal client’s bank account without permission and told the woman she’d invested it in her office. The lawyer then allegedly encouraged the woman to lie in court that she’d approved the deal when the transaction was raised to impeach Mickie Jarvill in a lawsuit. Mickie Jarvill allegedly told the woman that misleading the court was the only way she’d recoup her missing money.
• The couple pilfered more than $500,000 from an estate that Mickie Jarvill was managing for relatives in Oklahoma. Checks written on the account show the money went to pay the Jarvills’ legal, business and personal expenses. Within eight months of the Jarvills gaining control of the estate’s cash, the account balance went from $600,000 to just $13.34. The estate’s heirs received less than $100,000 of their money before the account was emptied.
Mickie Jarvill’s license to practice law in Washington was indefinitely suspended in April after her relatives in Oklahoma complained to the Washington State Bar Association. The bar expects to conduct a disciplinary hearing on Jarvill’s case sometime in the fall, communications director Judy Berrett said Friday.
The Jarvills’ financial dealings have been under scrutiny since the summer of 1999, when Snohomish County Sheriff Rick Bart asked the FBI to investigate.
Mickie Jarvill’s troubles were first detailed by The Herald in a July 1999 report in which she acknowledged that she and her husband, who also is a lawyer, have a business debt of about $2.5 million.
Documents obtained by the newspaper show at least $1.5 million owed to individuals who loaned money to the couple or invested in land-development deals. Some of the people who stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars are retirees in Snohomish and Island counties whom Mickie Jarvill said she befriended while representing them in legal matters.
Documents filed in federal court Friday show that FBI agents seized from the storage locker records related to all of the transactions reported on earlier by the newspaper.
Agents had the court’s permission to seize the couple’s business records dating back to 1992. The documents also make clear that the agents hoped to use special software and techniques to pore over any computer records related to the Jarvills’ financial dealings.
What happens next in the case was not immediately clear. Calls to an FBI spokesman were not immediately returned.
Herald writer Eric Stevick contributed to this story.
You can call Herald Writer Scott North at 425-339-3431or send e-mail to north@heraldnet.com.
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