Charleston lawyer on the run for years on fraud charges arrested in Nicaragua

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS/WVAH) — A Charleston lawyer wanted on felony charges since 2016 has been arrested in Nicaragua, U.S. marshals said.

Bill Lester is accused of overcharging the state thousands of dollars for work that was never done.

Marshals said Lester was taken into custody on Thursday. He is expected to be extradited back to the United States next week.

In 2016, Judge Duke Bloom ordered Lester's arrest on charges of fraudulent schemes and computer fraud that took place in 2014, or earlier. A flawed accounting system appears to have allowed charges, including multiple days where more than 24 hours of work were claimed.

The charges accuse Lester of overcharging for public defender services and Creed Captial LLC for time he spent working as a court-appointed criminal lawyer.

Creed paid court appointed lawyers up front for a fee rather than making them wait months for the state to pay them.

“He had billed, in a two-year period, over $600,000 to the state for indignant defense, which at $45 an hour is an awful lot of hours and the resulting investigation found he had at least 17 days he billed an excess of 24 hours,” said Dana Eddy of Public Defender Services in a previous interview.

Officials said an old, flawed accounting system allowed Lester to pull off much of his misdeeds -- including multiple days where more than 24 hours of work were claimed.

"Of course it could happen, but a couple of things would result,” Eddy said. “We would catch it almost immediately and, most likely, it would happen to somebody other than the state, but we have an electronic system where vouchers have to be submitted to us electronically."