Michelle Elowski

ALPENA — Alpena attorney Michelle Elowski, arrested last week on embezzlement charges, will have to tell a judge in a separate courtroom on Monday whether she can hand over more than $770,000 she managed on behalf of two Alpena families.

Elowski will face back-to-back hearings at 8:15 a.m. Monday in Alpena’s 88th District Court after being ordered to hand over $502,969 to the estate of Kenneth Mausolf and $270,908 to the Trueman Harrison and Modesta Harrison Trust, according to court records.

Those cases are separate from embezzlement charges she faces in Oscoda County, where police said she misused her clients’ money.

Elowski’s attorney with the Northeast Michigan Regional Defender Office declined to comment for this story. Attorneys for the Mausolf and Harrison families couldn’t be reached for comment on this story.

Elowski had managed funds for the Mausolf and Harrison families, but the families last year asked for the money back. When she didn’t give the money back, the families asked the Alpena County Probate Court to intervene and, on Dec. 28, the court ordered Elowski to fork over the cash.

At a contempt hearing this week, Elowski told Judge Alan Curtis she could not pay the total of $773,878 in part because the Michigan State Police had on Feb. 1 raided her law office and seized her files.

It would be “almost impossible” for her to pay, she said, as she was not given time to prepare for the hearing.

“I think we’ll have law enforcement in here to say what they took and what you don’t have access to,” Curtis told Elowski at the hearing. “I mean, if all of your accounts are frozen and that’s the case, we’ll need testimony on that.”

The Michigan State Police arrested Elowski on Feb. 1 at her office, Legal Me, on Chisholm Street in Apena. She was arraigned the next day in Oscoda County on two counts of common law fraud, one count of check fraud with non-sufficient funds of $500 or more, one count of embezzlement by a trustee of $1,000 or more but less than $20,000, and one count of embezzlement by a trustee of $50,000 or more but less than $100,000.

A preliminary examination, at which a judge will decide if the prosecution has enough evidence for the case to proceed to trial, was originally set for Feb. 12 but was recently adjourned to April 2.

Elowski posted bond in Oscoda County but was then immediately transferred and booked in the Alpena County Jail on Feb. 3 because of two bench warrants she faced for contempt of court in the Mausolf and Harrison cases.