Competency Exam for CPA Accused in $500,000 Swindle

ROCHESTER HILLS, MI – A disgraced Rochester Hills accountant who allegedly swindled his clients out of $500,000 will undergo a competency exam before standing trial on four embezzlement charges in Oakland County Circuit Court.

Walter Andrew Walas, 65, was to have gone to trial on Jan. 25, but Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Phyllis McMillen ordered a competency exam last month, The Oakland Press reports.

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Walas was found competent to stand trial in July by the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in July, but incompetent in a subsequent independent evaluation, according to a motion filed by his attorney, Timothy Barkovic.

Troy police began investigating Walas, who has an office in Troy, after some of Walas’ clients complained he’d written checks to himself and drained trust accounts, according to court documents.

Walas is already on probation until 2019 for an unrelated offense after pleading no contest in 2015 to allegations that he groped a woman with whom he had a professional relationship.

His CPA license was suspended, and a more than $630,000 judgment was entered against him in 2013 in a professional malpractice suit filed by the daughters of James P. and Johann “Jody” Headlee of Rochester Hills. Walas was the Headlees’ CPA and trustee of their estate trusts.

Walas also is a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by a commercial real estate management company that owns property in Macomb and Wayne counties.

» Photo via Michigan Offender Tracking Information System