Michael W. Fine, the former Sheffield Village attorney who hypnotized female clients and directed them to perform sexual acts during what they believed were legal consultations, has been granted early release after serving roughly 10 years of a 12-year prison sentence. Visiting Judge William McGinty ordered Fine released from the Belmont Correctional Institution around Thursday, placing the 69-year-old on four years of community control, according to Lorain County Common Pleas Court records.
The release, reported by the Chronicle Telegram, closes out a sentence that stemmed from one of the more unsettling cases to come out of a local family law practice. Fine once ran a Sheffield Village firm focused on domestic relations, divorce, and family law, according to CBS News, putting him in regular contact with clients navigating painful personal transitions. As reported by WOIO, those same clients would later become his victims.
How the Scheme Unraveled
The case broke open after a female client grew suspicious of Fine's conduct during what were supposed to be legal consultations, per WOIO's reporting. She brought her concerns to police, who initially suggested she simply find another lawyer. Undeterred, she began recording her own interactions with Fine and used those recordings to file an emergency motion seeking suspension of his law license, then showed the material to investigators.
That evidence set the stage for the sting that finally caught Fine in the act. Sheffield Lake police and Lorain County prosecutors equipped the woman with hidden recording equipment and raided Fine's office on November 7, 2014, after he began issuing explicit sexual commands while placing her in a trance, the same CBS News report states. The woman had told investigators she left meetings with Fine wet in her vaginal area and with a disheveled bra, per WOIO.
Trances, Commands, and a Widening Victim Pool
Court filings described how Fine placed clients in hypnotic states both in his office and over the phone, directing them to masturbate or experience orgasms while leaving them with no conscious memory of the commands afterward, according to TIME. Victims reportedly recalled only ordinary legal discussions until investigators analyzed the audio recordings. WOIO reported that Fine told one woman to have an orgasm and instructed another to imagine she was being made love to by the world's greatest lover.
Though Fine was ultimately convicted in connection with six specific clients, law enforcement disclosed at his sentencing that up to 25 women had come forward alleging he attempted or succeeded in hypnotizing them, a figure reported by CBS News affiliate coverage at the time. Police also received calls from other women who said Fine had attacked them, according to WOIO.
Guilty Plea and a Lifetime on the Registry
Fine was charged in 2015 and remained free on bond as the case proceeded, per WOIO's account. He pleaded guilty in September 2016 to five counts of kidnapping and one count of attempted kidnapping, each carrying a sexual motivation specification, which under Ohio law applies when restraint or an induced trance state is used for sexual gratification. The specifications mandated lifetime sex offender registration, TIME reported.
At his November 2016 sentencing, one victim testified that Fine had systematically exploited sensitive personal vulnerabilities she disclosed to him while seeking legal help to escape an abusive domestic situation, according to the same TIME report. Fine's wife, Aneta Fine, defended him at that hearing, testifying that the allegations came out of nowhere and describing him as a loving husband and father to their two daughters.
Disbarment and a Multimillion-Dollar Judgment Remain
Fine's law license is gone for good. He submitted his resignation to the Supreme Court of Ohio in August 2015, permanently surrendering his ability to practice law anywhere in the country even before his criminal conviction, CBS News reported. That disbarment was never reversed and stands independent of his release from prison.
The criminal case was not the only reckoning Fine faced. In October 2018, a Lorain County Common Pleas Court judge ordered him to pay more than $2.3 million in civil damages to a former client who sued him for assault, battery, and emotional distress, according to AP News. Fine now begins four years of community control under Judge McGinty's order, required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
