A Manhattan lawyer admitted to the bar in 1976 has been suspended from practicing law for four years after misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars in client funds and engaging in the unauthorized practice of law while under interim law-practice suspension, a state appeals court has ruled.

But the lawyer, Claude Castro, who runs a small or solo law firm located on Madison Avenue, according to multiple websites, avoided a disbarment that an attorney grievance committee at one point had asked for. And a referee who held a 2019 liability hearing in the disciplinary matter decided that Castro’s misappropriation of at least $58,000 was “nonvenal”—or without a corrupt intent—because, said the referee, the misappropriation of client money was attributable to “poor” self-management by Castro of his law firm, according to an Appellate Division, First Department panel that adopted the referee’s liability findings and sanction recommendations in full while handing down Castro’s four-year suspension.