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The two name partners of the Mintz Fraade Law Firm in Manhattan have accepted disbarment amid a disciplinary investigation into allegations that they had misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in client funds in 2012.

The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department on Thursday accepted the resignations of Alan Fraade and Frederick M. Mintz and struck both lawyers' names from the role of attorneys licensed to practice in the state of New York.

According to a per curiam opinion, the Attorney Grievance Committee was probing allegations that the two men had "willfully misappropriated" $125,000 while they were retained to represent another attorney, who was serving as the executor of an estate and as trustee of a related trust. Fraade and Mintz were accused of transferring the funds from an estate account into their law firm's escrow accounts and then moved $70,000 to yet another account that was used to pay the firm's operating expenses.

Both said that as of April 2017, a $487,000 balance belonging to the estate and trust were not kept in an attorney trust account, and aggregate funds of $360,000 were held in an account named "The Mintz Fraade Law Firm, P.C.," which they said was "created to be utilized for replenishing the … scrow funds."

Fraade and Mintz said the firm issued a $425,000 check that May to the beneficiaries of the estate and trust and that a remaining balance of $73,000 remained in the firm's escrow account, pending direction from the courts. All funds held in escrow had either been distributed or were available for distribution, they said, according to the opinion.

The ruling said that both Fraade and Mintz agreed that they could not successfully defend themselves against the allegations "based on the facts and circumstances" of the alleged misconduct.

They instead submitted their resignations "freely and voluntarily," knowing that approval would result in a disbarment order, the opinion said.

Fraade and Mintz, who have been admitted to practice law since 1972 and 1960, respectively, said Thursday that "no one was harmed" and that "everyone got what they were owed" in the end.

The former attorneys had asked the First Department to delay their official resignation for 30 days in order to notify their clients and wind down their practice. That request, however, was denied, and the court said the resignations applied retroactively, to July 22.

Fraade said ethical rules would apply to the shuttering of the firm, but declined to comment any further on the proceedings.

Earlier this year, Fraade and Mintz were accused in a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of running a separate scheme with two other attorneys to disguise public sales of stock in the Massachusetts biotech firm PixarBio Corp.

Both men have moved to dismiss that lawsuit and denied acting in concert with the other defendants, Henry Sargent of Connecticut and Joseph J. Tomasek of New Jersey. Patrick Giordano, a licensed real estate agent from Brooklyn, was also implicated in the alleged scheme.

The New York Post in 2017 reported that Fraade had also been sanctioned by a Manhattan federal judge for lying that his client was based in the United Kingdom instead of Brooklyn to avoid a lawsuit over allegedly pirated television content.

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