Lexington lawyer left trail of fraud after death. Administrator picks up the pieces

Lexington lawyer Teddy Mims had 25 years of practice under his belt. But this was new. 

Linda Helton, 79, contacted him, claiming she’d had millions of dollars stolen by a Lexington lawyer who handled wills and estates. She wanted Mims’ help. 

He was hesitant to take the case. What she claimed seemed beyond the realm of possibility for a colleague of the profession he so valued, he said. 

But she had documents that proved it was true. 

“When I started to get the hard information, it became real,” Mims told the Herald-Leader.

In March, Mims took on the case. Helton claimed the lawyer, Delmon Lyle McQuinn, stole up to $5 million from her late husband’s estate. 

Helton filed a civil complaint accusing McQuinn of multiple counts of misconduct, including breach of fiduciary duty, legal malpractice, fraud, forgery, conversion, theft by deception, elder abuse, undue influence, negligence and emotional distress.

But the story has taken several sharp turns in the past four months. 

Just days after Helton’s lawsuit was filed, McQuinn married his longtime girlfriend, Kelly Leigh Jordan. Then he died by suicide. 

The public administrator appointed to take over McQuinn’s cases, John Norman, discovered McQuinn’s misdealings were much wider than just Helton and her late husband. Norman represents the McQuinn estate. 

McQuinn was licensed to practice in Kentucky in October 2003 and joined the Goeing Law Firm as partner in 2012. But even before his death, several claims were made — and substantiated — by the Kentucky Bar that found some of McQuinn’s practices were less than ethical. 

McQuinn had left a trail of fraudulent wills and estate transactions, court documents say, as he enriched himself at the expense of his clients. He could have as many as 3,800 victims, Norman wrote in court filings. It’s unclear how long McQuinn may have been defrauding his clients.

The scale of the fraud, several lawyers said in interviews with the Herald-Leader, is the largest they’ve ever seen in Kentucky. 

McQuinn’s alleged fraud

McQuinn’s deception began to fall apart March 5, when Helton’s lawsuit was filed. 

McQuinn was a probate attorney with Lexington law firm Goeing, Goeing & McQuinn PLLC. The firm, as well as partners Dustin Beard, Stanley Goeing and Matthew Goeing, are named in Helton’s suit. 

John Dwyer, attorney for the partners, declined to comment for this story citing pending litigation. 

The suit claims McQuinn, who was hired to settle Helton’s late husband’s estate, had a hold over her. He regularly showed up at her home, contacted her about non-business affairs and sent her gifts. 

But that changed in March when Helton filed her lawsuit and said there were inauthentic signatures on formal documents that did not match. The documents were notarized illegibly, but resembled McQuinn’s signature, according to the lawsuit.

“He made a pretty good connection with her to try and keep that control,” Mims told the Herald-Leader. “When he learned he was getting fired and he felt something was coming down the pipe — a week later he killed himself.”

McQuinn, 48, was found dead of self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning March 18 in Clark County, according to a coroner’s report. He left behind a note that mentioned Helton’s suit and claims that he took advantage of others, according to court documents. 

When Norman, the public administrator, began investigating McQuinn’s cases, they quickly unraveled. 

Norman declined to comment for this story, but court filings reveal much of what he found. 

“Delmon Lyle McQuinn, sought to hinder, delay or defraud claims of creditors during his lifetime through a series of transactions, and a marriage immediately preceding his suicide,” Norman wrote in a court filing.

The deceptions weren’t especially meticulous. Most of the contact information for McQuinn’s clients simply doesn’t exist, according to court documents. 

But several different kinds of alleged fraud emerged — phantom trusts, fraudulent notary signings and extensive self-dealings, according to court filings. 

Heather Harris, an attorney for Helton, wrote in a May 19 court filing that McQuinn’s law firm was a “playground to take advantage of clients in ways that would shock the conscience of both the general public” and members of the legal profession. The case is assigned to Fayette Circuit Judge Julie Goodman.

The number of potential victims continues to rise by the week, and Harris places at least some of the blame on partners of McQuinn’s law firm. 

“These claims are only likely to grow as all these defendants continue to attempt to keep any ill-gotten gains and in doing so continue to commit further fraud on both (Helton) and this court,” Harris wrote in court filings.

This sentiment rang true for Mims, who said the foundation of the legal profession “is one built on ethics and trust.”

“The general public, especially the elderly, should have the expectation that, when they hire an attorney, that attorney will represent their interests,” Mims told the Herald-Leader. “We hope that the public understands that this alleged conduct by Lyle McQuinn, his partners, and colleagues is not representative of our profession. I can tell you that the legal community will not stand for conduct such as that alleged in this case.”

Phantom trusts

McQuinn amassed much of his ill-gotten fortune through “phantom trusts,” to which he would transfer money from his clients’ estate bank accounts, according to court documents.

McQuinn opened the bank accounts for clients to help settle their estate, but he would not close the accounts when the estate was settled. Instead, he would let them lie dormant for months, or even years, according to court records, and eventually siphon money from them. 

That’s what happened with one former client, Rita Sprague, whose estate was closed in August 2023. 

Ten months later, McQuinn requested a wire transfer of $72,000 from Sprague’s estate account. He send the money to a title company in Tennessee and eventually used it help pay for a million-dollar lake house, according to court documents. 

The lake house was obtained through a trust established by Jordan, McQuinn’s then-girlfriend, named the “Wet and Wild Trust.”

In total, Norman discovered that nine transfers were placed from different accounts associated with McQuinn to purchase the lake home, court documents state. 

Another of those accounts was from the estate of Anthony Taylor, whose case was recently reopened. 

Taylor’s estate was settled informally in November 2021. But McQuinn illegally kept nearly $250,000 from the estate, according to court documents.

Voidable wills

One of McQuinn’s most common methods of deceit, according to court documents, was falsifying wills. He frequently had clients sign documents with no witness or notary present, and then finished the documents later, without the client present. 

That practice runs contrary to Kentucky law, which mandates that two people must be present when a will is signed, and the person whose will is being prepared must also be present when it’s authorized by a notary. 

Without those steps, a person’s will can be voided when they die, leaving their family without clear direction about what should happen to their loved one’s belongings. 

Norman wrote in court filings that the likely invalid wills were one of the more “troubling issues” he discovered while examining McQuinn’s cases. 

And it’s not just clients. McQuinn’s estate is under a microscope, too. 

Jordan and her sister, Kristy Lovell, as well as McQuinn’s partner, Beard, are alleged to have forged notary or witness signatures on deeds and documentation related to McQuinn’s estate and assets, Norman wrote in court documents. 

In one example, Jordan tried to transfer to herself the deed for the couple’s $2 million residence in the 6700 block of Old Richmond Road in Lexington. 

She submitted the deed transfer to the Fayette Clerk’s office April 23 — weeks after McQuinn died, and the same day Norman was appointed to oversee McQuinn’s estate — but signed it with the date March 14, one day after the couple got married. 

Norman filed a civil action against Jordan to have the Richmond Road deed transfer voided. Judge Lucy VanMeter partially denied Norman’s petition and claimed there was not enough evidence to support his claims. Norman has 20 days to amend the petition. 

Jordan has asked a judge to remove Norman as public administrator.

Jordan’s attorney, Bryan Sergent, declined to comment on pending litigation.

Meanwhile, Norman continues to sift through McQuinn’s clients’ wills to determine how many need to be reopened and those which may be a liability to settling the vast McQuinn estate.

Helton’s lawsuit remains ongoing. In June, Goodman denied a motion from Beard and the Goeing brothers to dismiss the claims.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed a May 19 court filing to Fayette Circuit Judge Julie Goodman. The filing was by Heather Harris, a lawyer for Linda Helton.

This story was originally published July 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

Taylor Six

Lexington Herald-Leader

Taylor Six is the criminal justice reporter at the Herald-Leader. She was born and raised in Lexington attending Lafayette High School. She graduated from Eastern Kentucky University in 2018 with a degree in journalism. She previously worked as the government reporter for the Richmond Register.