By Rebecca Gaunt

Cobb County Board of Education vice chair John Cristadoro and Sagicor Life Insurance Company filed a consent judgment Wednesday in which Cristadoro admitted to misusing money from a client to pay operating expenses and credit card statements.

Read the consent agreement by following this link.

Cristadoro’s attorney, Caitlyn Powers, tried to have the judgment redacted and sealed at a hearing on Monday, but Fulton County Court Judge Wesley B. Tailor ruled that public interest outweighed Cristadoro’s right to privacy.

According to the document, Cristadoro used client funds to cover cash flow shortages at his company, Alliance Activation. Without Sagicor’s consent, Cristadoro put the money it wired to Alliance toward operating expenses and credit cards that included Cristadoro’s personal transactions.

Sagicor’s funds were not segregated or placed in escrow or a trust account. In total, Sagicor wired $250,000, $25,000 of which was commission to be kept by Alliance for negotiating a sponsorship agreement with Sunburst LLC. Alliance was then unable to make the payment to Sunburst when it came due.

Cobb attorney Bill Atkins spoke to the Courier regarding the consent judgment.

“If I give you my money and ask you to hold it, and use my money to pay somebody else, it’s not your money. Traditionally, for lawyers, we’re required to maintain that money in a separate account known as an escrow account. If we co-mingle so much as a cent of that money and use it for our own purposes, we get disbarred,” Atkins said.

Alliance has not returned any funds to Sagicor as of the filing.

As part of the agreement, Alliance and Cristadoro must repay $225,000, plus future interest. The first payment of $186,000 is due within three days of Wednesday’s filing, followed by $500 monthly payments.

The debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy court due to the parties’ acknowledgment that it arises from “money obtained by false pretenses, a false representation, or actual fraud” as defined by the law. 

“You essentially have an elected public official, a member of the Cobb County school board, who has acknowledged that he intentionally appropriated his client’s money and converted it to his own use without his client’s knowledge. That’s as vanilla and politely as I can put it. It is conduct that in any professional industry would get you fired,” Atkins said.

The defendants also agreed to pay the plaintiff’s attorney and court costs.

If Cristadoro defaults on the judgment, it will accrue interest at an annual rate of 10%.

“Honesty is an immutable characteristic. You either possess it or you don’t. This entire course of dealing, as summed up in this judgment, demonstrates that this man is not honest and not trustworthy, and should not be the custodian of taxpayer dollars,” Atkins said.

Cristadoro has not returned requests for comment.

Rebecca Gaunt earned a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree in education from Oglethorpe University. After teaching elementary school for several years, she returned to writing. She lives in Marietta with her husband, son, two cats, and a dog. In her spare time, she loves to read, binge Netflix and travel.