Former Johnny Gardner Law Group employee accused of stealing nearly a half-million dollars

The letter states that at the time of Creel’s death and until sometime in 2019 Barefoot worked at the law firm and was also a partner with Gardner in several ventures.

In his letter, Brice said he took part in an Oct. 19, 2017, meeting at the Johnny Gardner Law Group attended by Gardner, Brice, Barefoot, Gainey, Small and attorney Jarrett Bouchette. During the meeting, Brice wrote, a spreadsheet was passed around listing the estate’s assets. 

“Among the assets listed were cash balances as of September 30, 2017 in two different Johnny Gardner Law Group Trust Accounts, one having a balance of $196,008.98 and the other having a balance of $896,963.58, making a total of $1,092,972.50 represented as being held by Johnny Gardner Law Group on behalf of the Estate,” Brice said in the letter.

When reached Thursday morning, Brice declined to comment.

After two years of failing to file an inventory and appraisement of the estate with the probate court, Barefoot was removed and Brice took over as personal representative for the estate.

“I began the process of trying to reconstruct the activity in the Estate beginning with requesting copies of all documents in the estate’s checking account, which I discovered was overdrawn, as well as the estate’s money market account which had a zero balance,” Brice wrote. “Margaret Small and I met with Johnny Gardner requesting an accounting of the Trust Account funds and were told that because Luke had managed the accounting systems, Johnny was not able to provide any information other than that the money was no longer there.”

Brice wrote that once he took over as the estate’s representative, he independently accounted for the $896,963.58, which he posited was never in the trust account but instead “in an estate brokerage account and which funds flowed into the estate checking account before September 30, 2017, despite the representations on the spreadsheet. (The estate checking account balance at the time of the meeting on October 19, 2017 was $185.05 and the money market account balance was $0.)”