According to the website of a church board which lists accused Legal Aid embezzler Benjamin “Bennie” King Jr. as a member, he was employed at the Baltimore City Comptroller’s office. That’s where he went after leaving his 30-year job as CFO of Legal Aid, from which he and an accomplice allegedly skimmed $1.1 million.

But Comptroller Joan Pratt tells me that King no longer works for the city. He left in November 2009, citing personal reasons, she said. His lawyer, Warren Brown, says his client left the city to avoid bringing scrutiny on Pratt’s office when the charges came out.

Pratt said she had no idea authorities were investigating King. Asked if he could have embezzled from the city, Pratt said there’s no way.

“It would have been literally impossible,” she said. “He would have been unable to do that because his duties involved checking and collecting information.”

King was a special accounting systems analyst for the Municipal Telephone Exchange, which runs telephone and mail services for the city government. He was in charge of tracking expenses, reconciling accounts and verifying documents before the city paid its phone bills.

Brown says King left Legal Aid in early 2008 because he was having cardiac and respiratory problems. He is not currently working, he said.

Asked whether King did what he is accused of, Brown demurred.

“I don’t know whether he did it or not,” he said. “I’m not there; I’m one man, one place. You have to ask the government their position on that.”

“We’ll take a look at what they’re working with, what type of evidence they may have, whether they’re correct in their assessment, whether it’s worth fighting,” Brown said. “The hope is that when the dust settles and the smoke clears, it won’t really amount to much of anything, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.”

The Court of Special Appeals received a special delivery earlier this week: the original case record from the $150 million verdict in favor of 89 Jacksonville homeowners against ExxonMobil Corp. A judge upheld the award in September, at which point Exxon noted its appeal.

It took a truck to haul “27 boxes and one plastic map” to Annapolis, according to court records. A breakdown of the boxes:

• 8 contained the complaints filed by the homeowners in the mass-action suit
• 6 were marked “Alban, et al v. Exxon,” the lead case in the trial (the plaintiffs were collectively called the Alban plaintiffs)
• 5 contained exhibits
• 3 contained jury questionnaires
• 2 contained transcripts
• 2 contained “memos, appendices and verdict sheets”
• 1 contained jury selection sheets

Arguments in the case take place in September. In preparation, I’ve heard Exxon made copies of all of the exhibits at a cost approaching five figures.