Prosecutor Ron O’Brien and Attorney General Mike DeWine will announce the charges this afternoon after the grand jury determined there was sufficient evidence that Kormanik stole about $41,000 from two of his wards.
Kormanik faces third- and fourth-degree felony charges and up to four-and-a-half years in prison.
In 2012, after a ward died, Kormanik made several withdrawals from the ward’s bank account totaling about $34,000, according to the indictment.
Kormanik deposited the money into his personal checking account and used the funds “to benefit himself,” according to the indictment.
In another case the indictment accuses Kormanik of transferring the remaining $7,200 of a ward’s pension into his personal account two years after the ward died.
Kormanik then gave $7,000 of that money to his wife.
O’Brien said Kormanik, 64, is expected to turn himself in at the Franklin County Jail on Friday morning.
Kormanik resigned as guardian of more than 300 wards in late August after briefly checking himself into a local hospital for mental-health treatment.
County probate Judge Robert G. Montgomery had already removed Kormanik from about 50 cases because of questionable actions, including some of those revealed in a five-day Dispatch series in May.
That series, titled “Unguarded,” found Kormanik and several other attorneys were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last few years in questionable legal fees.
The court had appointed Kormanik to oversee the care and finances of hundreds of wards throughout the last decade.
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Lawyer indicted for theft from those he was supposed to protect