Zeeland lawyer pleads to stealing $900k

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - A former Zeeland attorney has admitted to stealing nearly a million dollars from unwitting clients.

Kenneth Hoesch agreed Sept. 21 to plead guilty to scamming people out of $900,000 through fraudulent estate planning trusts.

That plea was entered and accepted Sept. 26.

The government had alleged Hoesch took clients' money, but then never put it into a trust. He was charged at the federal level with mail fraud and a felony tax offense.

Some of the money came from trusts he helped set up for the American Cancer Society.

In June 2011, a U.S. Secret Service agent said Hoesch took $50,000 from one trust just before leaving on a vacation to the Caribbean island of St. Barts.

He now has to pay back $889,000 of the stolen money, as well as another $835,000 to Grand River Bank.

Hoesch could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.