In 2017, 77-year-old Heinz Sommerfeld quietly passed away in a nursing home. You may think that a man who died in a nursing home passed away without a penny to his name, but that’s not the case; in fact, his Will was forged to gain access to his money.
It was probably not known that this man was extremely wealthy, until his estate and assets were all funneled into the bank account into someone who was not his heir. The correct heir to the money ($800,000) was Sommerfeld’s younger half-brother. Instead, it wound up in the bank account of police officer Robert Konashewych.
Konashewych filed a false affidavit with the courts and had forged Sommerfeld’s Last Will and Testament. Konashewych conspired with a senior client representative at the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee to ease the way for this fraud. He had essentially The police officer in question, had a an annual salary of $120,000. How did they think this would work? People would be curious as to why such a large sum of money wound up in the bank account of someone unrelated to the Testator. It is similar to the article we posted about Karen Williams, who became the Executor of a woman that their loved ones didn’t know.
You can read more about the case, here.