A suspended Waterbury attorney accused of siphoning from clients at least $411,000, which remains untraced to this day, was sentenced Friday to 41 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

Alan Giacomi, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud, was also ordered to pay $411,715 in restitution. He had faced 57 months in prison.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shea sentenced Giacomi, who must report to prison July 26.

A general practice attorney for 19 years, Giacomi was accused of bilking clients, including two in their 90s, of hundreds of thousands of dollars and using the money for his own benefit. Giacomi, in the defense sentencing memo, blamed alcohol and drugs for his downfall. A Superior Court judge suspended him from practicing law in April 2017.

In a May 10 sentencing memo, the government said Giacomi, 45, “swindled and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from his legal clients and his friends.”

Those clients and friends, the sentencing memo said, “relied on his status as an attorney and trusted him with large sums of money that Giacomi has made no efforts to pay back.”

U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea of Connecticut. Courtesy photo.

Responding to a defense sentencing memo, the government wrote: “The defendant is correct that being an attorney is not easy. The profession Giacomi entered requires its wards to shoulder great responsibility, putting clients' needs first while acting with integrity as officers of the court. … In the nine months since Giacomi became aware of the federal investigation, he has not paid a penny in restitution to his victims.”

Instead, the government memorandum said, the attorney “did exactly the opposite.” Giacomi, the government said, withdrew the remaining funds from his Interest on Lawyer's Trust Account the day after realizing he was a target of the investigation. It said he then hid the money, “rather than allowing those funds to be used to compensate his innocent victims.”

In one instance, the government said, Giacomi's cousin hired him to assist with her mother's entry into a nursing home. The woman who was to go into the nursing home was Giacomi's great-aunt. But prosecutors said Giacomi convinced his cousin to take out a life insurance annuity in his great-aunt's name for more than $35,000. The money was supposed to be used to pay part of his great-aunt's nursing home bill, but, instead, was “embezzled by Giacomi,” according to the government.

In its May 3 sentencing memo, the defense asked for leniency.

Giacomi, the defense sentencing memo said, “began with the best of intentions and served as a court-appointed attorney for indigent parents and children involved with the Department of Children and Families.”

But, the memo continued: “After lawyering for over a decade, the demands of practice became too much. Those demands—the demands we all feel to a greater or lesser degree as lawyers—exacerbated Alan's underlying mental health disorders. And, to ameliorate the symptoms of those disorders, Alan turned to a time-tested crutch: drugs and alcohol.”

The memo continued: “We should not forget the contributing role that mental health and substance abuse played in this offense, and that any of us, at any time, could suffer from either or both of these problems.”

Federal Defender Ross Thomas requested a sentence of less than 41 months' imprisonment. Thomas declined to comment on the matter Friday.