Feds: Lawyer stole from Cancer Society

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - A former Ottawa County lawyer stands accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from trusts and estates he controlled -- including money from the American Cancer Society and "vulnerable adults."

A U.S. Secret Service agent said Kenneth Hoesch took $50,000 from one trust just before leaving on a vacation to the Caribbean island of St. Barts.

The agent leveled the accusations against the former lawyer in an application for a federal warrant to search Hoesch's email.

The Secret Service, the IRS, the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service have been investigating Hoesch's years-long "embezzlement, mail fraud and bank fraud enterprise" for six months, the agent wrote. No criminal charge appears to have been filed.

A federal magistrate judge approved the warrant Tuesday morning.

The agent alleges Hoesch took $320,000 from a trust he controlled -- the Myrtle Roelofs Trust -- and loaned it to a business he owned, Timken Industrial Management, Inc.

Investigators also found evidence that the then-trustee wrote a check to himself for $50,000 from that trust in February 2009, one or two days before leaving for St. Barts, the agent said in an affidavit requesting the search warrant. He wrote himself another two checks from the trust in June 2007 totaling $81,000, the agent alleged.

The loan to Hoesch's business came to light after an American Cancer Society lawyer went to court in September 2010 looking for money the society was expecting from the trust, according to the affidavit. Myrtle Roelofs had died more than three years earlier.

Two days after the court hearing, Hoesch told his then-law partners -- one of whom was his brother -- he had taken money from a trust, the agent said. Hoesch then resigned from firm and the state bar, the affidavit stated. The other partners barred Hoesch from the office and changed the locks.

They later told investigators "there are additional trusts that may have been victim to Kenneth Hoesch's embezzlement," the secret service agent wrote.

24 Hour News 8 attempted to contact Hoesch on Tuesday but has not yet been successful. A message was left late Tuesday afternoon with his attorney.