A California woman was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for scamming nearly $4 million from vulnerable wealthy people, including one man whose body she crushed and dropped piece by piece in a bay to hide her theft of his estate.
Authorities described a scam in which Caroline Joanne Herrling, 44, used Google Earth images to scout for wealthy homes that had algae in the pools, which she figured meant the owners weren’t able to care for the properties and were good marks for her scam.
She was right.
Herrling and her accomplices broke into one home in Sherman Oaks in 2020 and took over the property from the elderly victim, who died at some point. His corpse rotted while she looted his estate. Herrling first tried to dissolve the body, then crushed his bones and teeth and scattered the pieces in San Francisco Bay.
She posted selfies to Instagram of herself on the sailboat as she was scattering the body parts.
“It takes an exceptionally ruthless person to turn the disposal of a victim of identity theft into a celebration,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Brown wrote in a sentencing memo to the judge asking for the maximum 20-year sentence.
Authorities still don’t know if Herrling or others murdered the victim, and they said she took methodical steps in “eradicating” him. That included removing the floorboards in the bedroom where he likely died.
She faked a will purporting to be the executor of the estate of the dead man. She also faked another will that made the dead man executor and beneficiary of another estate, giving her control of both.
Prosecutors said Herrling, who went by the alias Carrie Phenix, is also to blame for the suicide of another man who killed himself after she and her accomplices used an imposter to gain power of attorney and sell his home out from under him, leaving him in despair.
When authorities moved in on Herrling, they found stolen and fake police badges, a fake FBI identification card and 16 guns, including a loaded pistol she kept in her purse and a homemade silencer made out of an oil filter. Prosecutors said they fear she used the badges to coerce information from people to help her scams.
They also said they traced $3,887,051 in stolen money. Authorities said that, given the fake IDs and other scams in progress they detected in a search of Herrling’s phone, there may be other victims they don’t know about.
The judge in the case said Herrling treated her victims “like a cash register.”
Prosecutors said that given good behavior credits and other programs, Herrling could end up in prison for less than 11 years of her two-decade sentence.
An accomplice, Matthew Jason Kroth, 50, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.