The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit accusing trustees of a pension plan in Hartford of misusing using nearly $1 million in assets for personal use.

The lawsuit alleges that James T. Farrell III of West Hartford improperly transferred more than $960,000 in plan assets to his bank account to pay for personal and operating expenses of Farrell Associates.

Telephone messages were left Monday for Farrell at his home and office.

The lawsuit, which also names Farrell's wife Nancy, alleges Farrell attempted to conceal his actions from plan participants by fabricating participant statements and filing false forms from 2000 to 2003 with the labor department and Internal Revenue Service.

"The employees of Farrell Associates are counting on this pension plan for their future retirement benefits," said Bradford P. Campbell, assistant secretary of the department's Employee Benefits Security Administration. "The law is very clear that plan assets cannot be used to pay personal and corporate expenses unrelated to the operations of the plan."

The lawsuit seeks a court order to permanently bar the defendants from serving as fiduciaries or service providers to such plans, restore all money owed to the plan with lost earnings, disgorge all profits gained as a result of alleged fiduciary breaches and appoint an independent fiduciary to be the plan's trustee.

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