Law firm receptionist scammed people into paying her, rather than employer, police say
A secretary at an Indiana law firm assigned to the reception desk was recently charged with 42 felonies based on allegations that she created fake expungement orders and stole money from people who thought that they were represented by her employer.
Heather Anne Textor’s scam allegedly worked like this, according to CBS News:
• Textor would greet alleged victims at the front desk.
• They paid her, thinking that the firm would handle their expungements.
• She allegedly gave them forged receipts and court documents while keeping most of the money for herself.
Textor, 37, of Lowell, Indiana, worked at Weiss, Schmidgall and Hires in Merrillville, Indiana. None of the alleged victims’ names were entered into the firm’s client records system, and the firm was not aware of the alleged scheme, CBS News reports.
The firm did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal request.
Regional News Source, which covers northwest Indiana news, offers some reporting from Textor’s affidavit.
The crimes happened between 2019 and 2025, according to the affidavit. The Indiana State Police investigated Textor after a man brought an expungement petition to the agency that appeared fraudulent. He had three additional expungement petitions and two expungement letters that he shared with law enforcement, which determined that an ID number on one document belonged to someone else. Additionally, the counties listed on his documents said they had no record of the expungements, according to Regional News Source.
Textor is also accused of forging judges’ signatures on the documents. According to the man who brought his documents to the Indiana State Police, he paid $1,626 for what he thought was legal work. The site reports that Textor deposited $626 into the firm’s account, but there was no record for the rest of the money.
Additionally, it’s alleged that she used the firm’s credit card machine to process a $350 retainer payment and transferred the money to her personal PayPal account. And she allegedly took an $850 payment through Cash App, which she said was the firm’s account, according to the article. It also reports that the firm said it never had a Cash App account.
In some cases, people who got documents from Textor were arrested or jailed because they were driving on suspended licenses, thinking that their records had been cleared, WANE reports.
The Indiana State Police urge anyone who paid Textor to contact them, according to the article.
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