Not the best way to represent a client

 This is nails on a chalkboard, no?  From the Herald:

Something seemed off-kilter when a Florida defense lawyer asked a federal judge in Miami to delay his client’s sentencing the day before the hearing in a health-insurance fraud case. The client showed up in court, but her lawyer didn’t. Then, U.S. District Judge Donald Graham lost his cool when he discovered that Tampa attorney Benjamin Waldo Buck Jr. had abandoned her after an August 2022 criminal trial. “Are you saying that since the trial ended you have not met with Mr. Buck regarding the Pre-sentence Investigation Report?” an incredulous Graham asked the defendant in late October. “No, not at all,” Jaroslava Ruiz responded, saying she went through the process with the probation office on her own.

Graham instantly assigned a seasoned defense lawyer to her Miami case and threatened to hold the no-show Buck in contempt of court. What the judge didn’t know was that Buck had been ghosting clients like Ruiz all over the state, generating more than 30 complaints with the Florida Bar, including allegations of keeping clients’ fees after dropping them. Last Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court revoked Buck’s license for five years — after he had voluntary agreed to surrender it, but then withdrew his motion. The Florida Bar called his reversal “a blatant abuse of the legal process and misrepresentation to this court.” 

On Tuesday, Graham finally held Ruiz’s sentencing hearing, giving her four years and four months in prison for conspiring with others at a Miami-area medical clinic that submitted tens of millions of dollars in false healthcare claims to private insurance companies. But after the longtime federal judge dealt with her punishment, Graham considered whether to hold Buck, her former defense lawyer, in contempt for failing to show up at her original sentencing hearing last October. Graham, who has served on the federal bench in South Florida for 32 years, said he had never seen such misconduct by a lawyer in his courtroom. “Frankly, I was shocked that a lawyer didn’t appear for sentencing,” he told Buck. Buck apologized profusely, saying he couldn’t attend Ruiz’s sentencing because he was representing another client in a criminal trial in another part of the state at the same time. “I’m sorry again, your honor, for my failure to appear,” he said. “I should have been here.” 

 Rather than find Buck in contempt and possibly send him to jail, Graham instead ordered the disbarred lawyer to pay a $1,655.72 fine to Ruiz — representing the personal costs that she incurred while traveling to her original sentencing hearing from North Carolina, where she moved with her family.