Disbarred For Fleecing Clients Out Of $1.5 Million In Entrusted Funds, Ex-Lawyer Yet To Be Arrested, Continues Living High Life; "It's Almost Too Hard To Believe," Says One Victim; State Bar's Client Security Fund To Cough Up Some Cash - How Much Is Unclear

In Central Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports:

• Winter Park attorney Julie Kronhaus lived the life of a wealthy woman. She was an expert on trusts and estates, the wife of a cardiologist.
  
  Then clients and lawyers accused her of embezzling more than $1.5 million.
  
  Earlier this year she was permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court and stripped of her accountant's license by the state. The high court accused her of misconduct, misappropriating funds, violating accounting standards and failing to shut down her law practice when she had been ordered to do so months earlier.
  
  Investigators discovered the missing money in 2014. Even so, she has not been arrested.
  
  "It's almost too hard to believe. It's very, very upsetting," said Alan Cook, an Oviedo businessman who, along with his wife, Brenda, have lost $1 million, according to public records.
  
  Kronhaus, 51, would not comment. She lives in a 6,500-square-foot home in Alaqua, a golf course community near Longwood, and had been a member of the Florida Bar for more than 20 years.
  
  Clients accuse her of looting trust funds that she set up and managed as well as other accounts under her control, according to records at the Florida Supreme Court, Florida Bar, Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation and circuit courts in Orange and Seminole counties.
  
  Among those she's accused of harming: an Oviedo divorcee whom she'd known for 30 years, a Baltimore lawyer and small businessmen and women in the Orlando area.
  
  Two partners in an aircraft business, Terry Turner and Larry Heilbron, lost $452,000 that Kronhaus was supposed to use to pay their IRS bill, records show. "Your actions, beyond being morally and ethically reprehensible, constitute civil theft," their attorney, A. Brian Phillips, wrote in a letter.
  
  A deputy with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office spent many months in 2014 investigating Kronhaus then turned the case over to the FBI several months ago, records show.
  
  An agent based in Maitland has been working on it, according to several victims, but has not recovered any money or put Kronhaus behind bars.
  
  "It's sickening to work your [whole] life, to work hard … All of the sudden we're wiped out in the blink of an eye," said Alan Cook.
  
  FBI spokesman David Couvertier would not comment.
  
  The first indication that something was amiss, according to court records, was when Kronhaus' checks started to bounce in 2014. They were big checks, $47,000 each to three separate clients, $226,000 to another, $240,000 to the Cooks. That's when the clients and the Florida Bar began to investigate.
  
  Mark Atas, the Baltimore lawyer, and his two sisters lost $140,000 after his family hired Kronhaus to manage the sale of the Martin County home they inherited from their parents. "This is amazing," he said. "It's not like she's just out of law school."
  
  'A lovely person'
  
  To her clients and friends, Julie Kronhaus was smart, reliable and hard working. She grew up in South Florida and became an accountant and tax expert with a law degree from Nova Southeastern University and a masters degree in tax law from Emory University.
  
  She was a solo practitioner or part of a two-lawyer firm near Winter Park and charged $350 an hour.
  
  She and her cardiologist husband, Kenneth Kronhaus, lived an extravagant lifestyle, according to friends and associates.
  
  He owns Lake Cardiology in Mount Dora and is host of a radio call-in show that's broadcast on 150 stations, "Good Day Health." Their home in Alaqua is valued at $901,000 by the Seminole County property appraiser. It backs up to a golf course and has a heated swimming pool. They sent their daughter to Lake Highland Prep.
  
  Julie Kronhaus wore designer clothes, drove a Lexus and often traveled with her teenage daughter to New York City to see Broadway productions and to other cities where the girl competed in beauty pageants.
  
  But Kronhaus also was generous. In 2007, she and a law partner donated $10,000 to kick-start a scholarship fund at what was then Valencia Community College. In 2010, they hosted a clothing drive for the University of Central Florida Women's Club.
  
  She also served on the board of directors and treasurer at the tiny, now-failed Maitland Academy for the Performing Arts, an after-school program for a dozen children interested in dance, music and drama.
  
  "She was a great board member," said Joann Kelly, who also served on the board. "To us she was a lovely person."
  
  Kelly did not learn about the allegations against Kronhaus until late last month. "Wow, that does not strike me at all as the person I sat across the table from for months," she said. "That's just shocking." There is no evidence she embezzled funds from the academy, Kelly said. "There weren't any funds to mismanage," she said.
  
  'A walking crime wave'
  
  In 1999, the Cooks sold their aircraft interior construction business and hired Kronhaus to set up a trust fund to hold the proceeds. In 2011, the last time they saw an account statement, it held $630,000, according to court records. Kronhaus was trustee.
  
  They then started another business, which sold in 2014. The $400,000 they netted that time went where it was supposed to: Kronhaus' attorney trust account.
  
  But when the Cooks asked for it, they got weeks of delays, they said, then one check that bounced then another. That's when they grew suspicious and discovered that the $400,000 was gone, so too was the $630,000 in their trust.
  
  "It is very troubling to me, and of course, to the Cooks, that one year following the theft perpetrated by Julie Kronhaus, she remains free," Kenneth Oertel, their attorney, wrote in a letter Nov. 16 to State Attorney Phil Archer. "She is a walking crime wave."
  
  Archer responded in a letter, saying the case was still under investigation and that the U.S. Attorney's Office was involved.
  
  The Cooks sued Kronhaus in state circuit court in Sanford, hoping to get back their money. She put up no fight, and in June a judge entered a final judgment against her.
  
  They have so far received no money, but Kronhaus gave them a $500,000 stake in her Alaqua home, according to a mortgage deed recorded in Seminole County property records. Kenneth Kronhaus' signature is on it, but he now contends that someone forged his name, according to court records.
  
  Turner and Heilbron also sued her. Again, she mounted no defense. Their request for a final judgment against her is pending in state circuit court in Orange County.
  
  Three people – whom the Florida Bar won't identify, saying that would violate its rules – will be paid something from the bar's Client Security Fund, which is set up specifically to help clients who have been cheated by Florida lawyers. How much those three will be paid versus how much they lost, though, is not clear.(1)
  
  The Cooks fear they'll have to sell their house to get by. It galls them that Kronhaus has not been arrested. "We're just sitting by, watching Julie Kronhaus spending our money," Alan Cook said. "She's still going to beauty pageants, still driving all over the country, living in a big house. It sucks."

Source: Disbarred Winter Park lawyer accused of embezzling more than $1.5 million.

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(1) For similar "attorney ripoff reimbursement funds" that attempt to clean up the financial mess created by the dishonest conduct of lawyers licensed in other states and Canada, see:

• Directory Of Lawyers' Funds For Client Protection (now includes a listing for Canadian client protection funds, courtesy of the American Bar Association);
• Check the USA Client Protection Funds Map;
• Check the Canada Client Protection Funds Map.

Maps available courtesy of The National Client Protection Organization, Inc.

See generally:

• N.Y. fund for cheated clients wants thieving lawyers disbarred, a July, 2015 Associated Press story on this Fund reporting that the Fund's executive director, among other things, is calling for prompt referral to the local district attorney when the disciplinary committee has uncontested evidence of theft by a lawyer injuring a client or an admission of culpability;
  
  When Lawyers Steal the Escrow, a June, 2005 New York Times story describing some cases of client reimbursements ("With real estate business surging and down-payment amounts rising with home prices, the temptation for a lawyer to filch money from a bulging escrow account and later repay it with other clients' money has never been greater, said lawyers who monitor the thefts.");
  
  Thieving Lawyers Draining Client Security Funds, a December, 1991 New York Times story that gives some-real life examples of how client security funds deal with claims and the pressures the administrators of those funds may feel when left insufficiently financed as a result of the misconduct of a handful of lawyer/scoundrels.