The Indiana State Police have charged a woman on 42 felony counts after, they say, she falsified criminal record expungement documents and pocketed the money of clients.
Heather Ann Textor, 41, of Lowell, Indiana, around 41 miles southeast of Chicago, is accused of misleading clients about her role at a law firm, taking their money purportedly to get criminal records expunged and to create documents relating to their driving privileges, the Indiana State Police said Friday.
Ms. Textor instead pocketed the money, falsified the signatures of judicial personnel purportedly involved in expunging records and led clients to believe that the services they paid for had been completed, state police said.
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“It’s really diabolical. Like, because, I would have never thought in a million years that if I go to a lawyer’s office, where you’re supposed to feel safe and secure about doing whatever you want to do, you know, at that law firm, I went there, and the fact to just get tricked and go through that, and it was it was wild,” Lamar Cheairs, who paid Ms. Textor $980 in 2023 for an expungement, told WLS-TV.
Lake County Prosecuting Attorney Bernard Carter said that Ms. Textor’s former employer, the law firm Weiss, Schmidgall, and Hires, and the judges whose signatures were purportedly faked had no knowledge of the scheme and are not under scrutiny from his office, according to WGN-TV.
The Indiana State Police began investigating Ms. Textor three years ago after receiving suspicious record expungement documents, specifically when one of the purported victims in the case went to try and buy a gun, according to the Times of Northwest Indiana.
Weiss, Schmidgall, and Hires fired Ms. Textor in 2023 after her alleged scheme was brought to light, according to the Times of Northwest Indiana. She is accused of providing fake documents to over 40 people over the course of five years.
Investigators found that the alleged fake documents were used to try to get government licenses and benefits, and that some people even ended up arrested or incarcerated because they believed that they had their criminal records expunged or their driving privileges restored, the state police said.
Others suffered financial losses, and the issuance of the fake documents subsequently required courts and other organizations to fix the issues they created, the state police said.
Ms. Textor is charged with five counts of fraud against a financial institution, 13 counts of forgery, two counts of counterfeiting, five counts of fraud between $750 and $50,000, seven counts of fraud with enhancing circumstances, three counts of regular fraud and seven counts of theft between $750 and $50,000.
Ms. Textor is due in court Tuesday for a bail review hearing and on Dec. 8 for a general hearing, according to court records.
Anyone who may have been a victim of Ms. Textor’s alleged scheme is urged to contact 219-696-6242, state police said.
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