SCRANTON — A Scranton attorney was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison this week after borrowing money over several years from clients, but not paying them back the principal and interest as promised. Eugene Daniel Lucas, 1425 Green Ridge St., pleaded guilty to five counts of theft by deception in February and was sentenced this week to three to 23 months in jail by Lackawanna County Judge James Gibbons.When released, Lucas will be on probation for one year and be required to do 150 hours of community service. He will also be required to pay restitution to his victims and to pay $10,656 - the cost of prosecution. Prosecutors said Lucas, 70, deceived clients — who ranged in age from 52 to 89 — promising to pay them back with interest.When charged in March 2022, Lucas had paid back part of nearly $300,000 he owed to his clients, but still owed $269,139 in principal, the charging document stated. In several of the cases, Lucas also invested his clients’ money with an insurance company without advising them he was an agent with the firm, which allowed him to reap thousands of dollars in commissions.The investigation began in August of 2021 after a 52-year-old woman reported that in 2016 she loaned Lucas $40,000 from a trust account he set up on her behalf. Lucas advised the woman not to tell anyone about the loan and promised he would pay $1,000 on the principal each month in addition to 3% interest paid monthly.Investigators obtained bank records indicating Lucas had written nearly $50,000 in checks from the woman's account from 2016 to September 2019. In February of 2022, knowing he was under investigation, Lucas made an additional loan from a 63-year-old woman and her 80-year-old husband for $150,000, to make payments on previous loans, prosecutors said. In June 2022, he was suspended from the Pennsylvania Bar Association by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel for the State Supreme Court. Lucas' law license is still suspended, according to the state website. He was licensed to practice law in 1981. "Clients should be able to trust their attorneys," District Attorney Mark Powell said in a release. "If an attorney steals money, he or she will be prosecuted like anyone else."