Indiana legal secretary faces 42 felonies over alleged fake court orders and stolen client fees

A former legal secretary in Indiana is facing 42 felony charges and three misdemeanour charges after a three-year police investigation into alleged forged court orders, missing legal fees and fake criminal record expungements. According to a probable cause affidavit reported by Region News Source, 37-year-old Heather Ann Textor of Lowell was arrested after clients who paid to clear their criminal records allegedly received fake court documents and forged letters from state officials instead. The investigation was led by Sergeant Joe White of the Indiana State Police Organized Crime and Corruption Unit. It began in October 2023, when a resident of Gary hand-delivered a suspected fake expungement petition to state police officers. A check of the records showed that the unique identification number on the man's completion letter belonged to someone else. Court clerks in Lake and Porter counties also confirmed that they had no records matching the case numbers or the man's name listed in the documents. Court records cited by Region News Source state that Textor worked as a legal secretary at the Merrillville law firm Weiss, Schmidgall, and Hires. Investigators believe the alleged schem...