Estate Planning Attorney Indicted on Criminal Charges

Michael W. Kwasnik, a forty-two year old estate planning attorney in the Philadelphia-area, is charged in a civil suit with selling unregistered securities to victims and using $8.5 million of his clients’ money for his own use. Kwasnik has also been indicted on criminal charges for taking $1.1 million from an elderly woman who hired Kwasnik to help with her estate planning.

The elderly client hired Kwasnik to set up a family trust to benefit the client and her children. Kwasnik was also hired to administer the estate of the client’s deceased sister. Instead of creating the trust, however, Kwasnik used the client’s money for his own purposes, including to pay his law firm expenses.

See Karen DeMasters, Philadelphia Lawyer Doing Financial Planning Charged with Cheating Retirees, Financial Advisor, Nov. 8, 2011.