Disbarred Vero Beach lawyer who stole $4.2 million from clients dies in prison

When Ira Hatch died in prison this month while serving a 30-year term, it marked the last chapter in one of the biggest Ponzi scheme crimes on the Treasure Coast, according to two prosecutors who convicted the disbarred Vero Beach lawyer in 2010.

Hatch, who was 76 when he died on June 1, was being housed at the Reception and Medical Center in Lake Butler, said Florida Department of Corrections officials, who did not confirm a cause of death.

He had served about 13 years of a sentence imposed in August 2010 after he was found guilty of racketeering related to stealing $4.2 million from hundreds of legal and real estate clients.

'Great deal of anger'

Hatch was arrested in January 2008 after Vero Beach police accused him of stealing money from his former law firm, Hatch & Doty, and his company, Coastal Escrow Services, which he shuttered in September 2007.

Most of his victims — including home buyers and sellers, Realtors, apartment landlords and law firm clients — were from Indian River and St. Lucie counties. Some lived out of state and in Canada, records show.

“It is certainly one of the largest thefts that I saw in my years with State Attorney's Office,” said Ryan Butler, who recently was appointed Indian River County Clerk of the Circuit Court. “There was a great deal of anger, and rightfully so, because many people … had saved up and put all their money as a deposit on their dream home, and now it was gone.”

Prosecutors at his trial called Hatch a “thief,” who used client money to support his family’s upper-class lifestyle and pay business expenses.

At the time of his arrest, he and his former wife Margaret Marjorie Hatch were living in a $1 million home in Castaway Cove Wave II, a gated community on Vero Beach's upscale barrier island.

Butler on Thursday described Hatch’s money thefts as a “pyramid scheme” that was discovered in 2007 because the area’s booming real estate market was “drying up.”

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“He was using the most recent deposits to pay for previous escrow deposits. By 2007, he no longer had the money in the escrow account to pay for the closings, because he'd been pulling it out for years,” Butler recalled. “And it just caught up to him."

The scheme fell apart in just a couple of days, Butler recalled.

“All of a sudden, checks were bouncing, and then he just shut his doors and said, 'There's no more money' … with no real explanation to any of the victims,” he said. “A Ponzi scheme only works as long as you find new victims.”

Hatch also was stealing from his law firm's trust account, and illegally pocketed the proceeds from lawsuits. He stole $1 million from one estate, Butler recalled.

'Vero Bernie Madoff'

As Vero Beach police began investigating Hatch’s crimes, detectives collected tens of thousands of pages of records as the list of victims grew, Chief Dave Currey recalled.

“To this day, I don't think we've had anything larger with regard to the Ponzi-type scheme or embezzlement, or theft of large monies like that,” Currey said. “It was Vero Bernie Madoff case. I mean, that's basically what it was.”

Madoff, the imprisoned financier who stole an estimated $4.5 billion from his investor clients, was 82 when he died in 2021. He pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to 150 years in the largest Ponzi scheme in the nation’s history, records show.

Hatch was 63 at the end of his two-month trial that abruptly ended when he struck a deal with prosecutors while jurors were still deliberating a verdict. He pleaded no contest to one count of racketeering and the state dropped 42 counts of grand theft and money laundering.

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Before that unexpected plea deal, prosecutors presented around 100 witnesses who described the financial destruction, battered trust and sense of betrayal that raged for months following Hatch’s arrest.

Prospective home buyers and renters testified that he'd been trusted with their money for real estate transactions. Realtors chipped in hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover his massive thefts.

Assistant State Attorney Lev Evans said at Hatch’s sentencing he thought, “This guy was once a successful attorney and look at where he is now."

“What a fall from grace,” he said.

Hatch kept stealing, Evans said, because “he needed more money than his law practice would support.”

“I hate to see somebody die in prison and he did have some redeeming qualities. But that does not discount the fact that day after day for at least a few years, he showed up to work to steal,” Evans said. “And every day he knew the potential penalty of what he was doing. He certainly got what he deserved.”

Melissa E. Holsman is the legal affairs reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers and is writer and co-host of  Uncertain Terms, a true crime podcast. Reach her at  melissa.holsman@tcpalm.com.  If you are a subscriber, thank you. If not, become a subscriber to get the latest local news on the Treasure Coast.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Imprisoned former Vero Beach lawyer Ira Hatch dead at age 76