Lawyer on the lam
WHAT A HEEL: Under indictment for (allegedly) stealing $1.1 million from a family trust he was supposed to administer for an elderly client, Cherry Hill, NJ, attorney Michael Kwasnik, 42, went on the lam to avoid prosecution, New Jersey Law Journal reports:
[He] was arrested by local police in Dothan, Ala., on an arrest warrant stemming from [the] indictment, according to Peter Aseltine, spokesman to state Attorney General Paula Dow.
Kwasnik was traveling by taxi to a bus station when the driver, suspicious of Kwasnik, alerted local police, Aseltine says. Police stopped Kwasnik at the bus station and arrested him upon discovering the outstanding warrant, Aseltine says, noting that Kwasnik was carrying several thousand dollars in cash, prepaid cell phones and his passport.
“It would appear to us that he was on the lam from our charges,” Aseltine told the Law Journal.
Aseltine says Kwasnik is not fighting extradition and should be transported back to New Jersey.
Kwasnik is charged with three counts of theft – failure to make required disposition of property received, misapplication of entrusted property, theft by unlawful taking – each of which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $150,000 fine. He is also charged with one count of money laundering, for which he faces up to 10 years in prison, a $500,000 fine and an additional $250,000 penalty.
Kwasnik and his father, William Kwasnik, are also defendants in for (allegedly) perpetrating a Ponzi scheme that bilked to 73 elderly and retired investors, and he is a defendant in a civil suit involving the estate of a client’s deceased husband. In 2009, the FTC settled a civil suit against Kwasnik regarding bogus mortgage relief services.
Looks like Kwasnik is a real nogoodnik.
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