A suspended Florida attorney, who allegedly stole $450,000 from his mother’s trust fund, is accused of murdering his lawyer father as a body with bullet holes was found at a Boca Raton law office on Saturday, according to a report.
Brandon Labiner, 34, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder when a family member discovered a body near a parking garage behind the Monterey, a building complex that housed his father Paul Labiner’s law office, according to the Palm Beach Post.
The victim’s identity has not been released by police as the victim’s family invoked Marsy’s Law, which prevented the release of a name to the public.
The outlet, however, cited other media outlets and reports naming the victim as Paul Labiner.
Officials identified a person of interest who had barricaded himself in a building and only came out after a SWAT Team and negotiator were called, the Boca Raton Police Department said in a statement.
“The subject cooperated and was taken into custody without incident. At the time, the subject was arrested on the active warrant,” cops said in the statement. “He was later transported to the Palm Beach County Jail while investigators continued to conduct interviews and gather evidence to determine the subject’s involvement in the death investigation.”
Surveillance footage from several locations was used to link Brandon Labiner to the fatal shooting.
The footage showed the suspect driving around the area of the building at 2 p.m., and the same individual riding up to Paul Labiner’s office on a bike an hour later carrying a drawstring bag, according to a police report obtained by the Sun-Sentinel.
The man is then seen removing a box containing a gun from the bag.
After putting the gun on the ground, the subject is seen “pacing around the parking garage” for forty minutes before picking up the gun and waiting behind a wall.
A second person then appears, and the two men get into a scuffle.
After going out of view, the man with the gun is seen running away, according to the paper.
Police discovered a gun cleaning kit and a piece of paper with an attorney’s name in a public restroom’s trash can, before finding the “drawstring backpack, a .9mm firearm magazine, multiple boxes of various brands of ammunition, a box for a gun, a gas can, a lighter, gloves, and a face mask,” in the suspect’s car, the outlet reported.
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Brandon Labiner made his first appearance in Palm Beach County court on Monday, where he was formally charged with first-degree murder premeditated with a firearm, according to court records viewed by The Post.
Brandon Labiner disputes the charges and is “grieving his father’s death,” his criminal defense lawyer Valentin Rodriguez told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Court documents show an uneasy past between the father and son after Paul Labiner sued Brandon for $30,000 in September alleging he stole $445,198.53 from a trust belonging to his mother Mindy.
The duo were partners at the firm Paul Labiner started in the 1980s until June of last year when Paul Labiner filed a civil suit against his son, claiming his poor work performance lost the firm business and that Brandon Labiner stole from the company.
“Brandon’s poor work ethic and subpar performance as a plaintiff’s attorney caused the volume of cases to drastically dwindle to what (Paul Labiner) believe is no more than a handful of viable cases,” county court documents viewed by The Post from the civil suit allege.
The suit also claims Brandon Labiner began exhibiting erratic behavior, lying to Paul and his clients about cases, being arrested for a DUI in Coral Springs on Feb. 22, 2022, and attempting to access Paul’s online accounts multiple times.
On one occasion, Brandon Labiner “engaged in a physical altercation with Paul (Labiner), who was injured in the process. As a result, Brandon (Labiner) was asked to leave the office premises,” the suit says.
Brandon Labiner, not satisfied with his father’s demands, snuck into the office on June 1, 2022, stole computer equipment, hacked into his father’s email, changed the passwords and stole a business checkbook.
The following day, Paul Labiner filed an Emergency Petition to remove Brandon Labiner as a Trustee of the Labiner SLAT (Spousal Access Lifetime Trust), but a judge deemed the matter was not an emergency.
Paul Labiner’s daughter, Arielle N. Bergman, was nominated as a First Level Successor Trustee and Mindy Labiner was sole beneficiary who supported the removal of Brandon Labiner as Trustee fearing he “would invade the trust and steal assets for himself and his wife.”
Within a matter of days after the Petition to Remove Trustee was filed, Brandon Labiner began selling business assets and then stealing the cash generated by the sales to accounts that benefited himself and his wife.
Before the lawsuit, Brandon Labiner managed the personal injury practice purchased by his father and ran under the name “Personal Injury and Accident Law Center,” while Paul Labiner maintained an estate planning, probate and corporate practice.
Brandon Labiner was suspended from the Florida bar in April after the Florida Supreme Court granted an emergency suspension against him based on his father’s accusations.
