Maurice D. Brooks Sr.led a lavish lifestyle on the backs of mentally disabled people in Seattle, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars

Maurice D. Brooks Sr. was paying tuition for his kids at a local private elementary school, owned a Lexus and Lincoln Navigator outfitted with flashy accessories, and vacationed twice a year at "Club Hedonism" in Jamaica.Brooks, who now lives in Texas, where he transferred his Renton-based hypnotherapy business, also was a frequent eBay buyer and had an account on Adult Friend Finder, an online dating service.
In Washington state, he headed a small nonprofit company that was supposed to help people with disabilities sustain themselves with their Social Security checks.
Instead, he led a lavish lifestyle on the backs of mentally disabled people in Seattle, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from their government checks and leaving at least one of the victims homeless.On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in San Antonio rejected Brooks' request for leniency, sentenced him instead to 78 months in prison and ordered him to pay nearly $309,000 in restitution, a figure the government claimed was conservative.The sentence was 15 months longer than what Brooks' lawyer, Ed Camara, argued for, and even eight months longer than prosecutor Bettina Richardson asked for.Brooks was indicted in Seattle in September. He cut a plea deal in San Antonio in November and pleaded guilty to Social Security representative payee fraud and felony theft of public money. He served as a representative payee for about 750 disabled clients from March 2003 through April 2007, and was supposed to help them use their government checks to pay expenses, such as rent, utilities and clothing. His company, like other representative payees, was allowed to charge a fee of $34 to $68 per client.
In a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors, the government claimed Brooks stole the money from more than 200 clients to "pay for a lifestyle far beyond his means and which included payments for luxury cars, automobile accessories for his Navigator and his Lexus, twice yearly vacations to Jamaica's 'Club Hedonism,' private elementary school tuition, Adult Friend Finder services, home mortgage payments, operating expenses for his company, an Arco credit card, hypnotherapy training and purchases of numerous items on e-Bay."

The sentence angered Brooks' relatives, who earlier blamed his "mistakes" on being "overstressed" while being chief executive officer of Professional Payee Services. Brooks, who has a master's degree in psychology, told the judge he understood the severity of his conduct, but that he would use his education and ability to pay back what he stole. The incredulous judge told Brooks he knew Brooks would never pay. Garcia also chided Brooks for what he perceived as lack of remorse

."I can see you're quite remorseful," Garcia told Brooks with sarcasm. "You should forget about hypnotherapy. You need to go into a drama club and get a little more remorseful."Brooks had a hypnotherapist office in Renton under the name Brooks Institute of Hypnosis. An ad for his office offered help for weight management, stress reduction, success motivation, golf and sports enhancement, self-esteem encouragement, overcoming procrastination, smoking cessation, gambling control and other concerns.The ad said he trained at the Kodra School of Hypnosis and American Pacific University and was working toward his doctorate in clinical hypnosis. Camara said Brooks had transferred that business to San Antonio, but records show it was never fully established because of his legal troubles.