How the Conspirators Found Their Victims
According to court records, Herrling and her co-conspirators searched affluent Los Angeles neighborhoods for homes that appeared unusually unkempt.
Prosecutors said Herrling used online mapping programs and drove through neighborhoods looking for algae-filled swimming pools, overgrown shrubs and other signs that a resident might be elderly, isolated or unable to care for the property. That type of search led the group to Wilding’s Sherman Oaks home.
Neighbors described Wilding as a recluse with few family members or friends. The criminal complaint said a concerned neighbor contacted police in December 2020 after not seeing him for approximately three months.
Investigators believe Wilding died sometime in September 2020, but authorities haven't exactly determined the manner of death. His remains have never been recovered, and the federal case ultimately didn’t charge Herrling or the other conspirators with causing his death.
Prosecutors said the conspirators left Wilding’s body inside his home while they took his mail, identifying information and property. Court documents state Herrling used a forged power-of-attorney form to pretend she had the authority to control his real estate and financial accounts.
According to the criminal complaint, Herrling also claimed to be the trustee of a family trust supposedly created by Wilding’s mother, June, who died in 2017. Investigators determined that the trust documents were forged.
The complaint says Herrling further claimed to have discovered the will of another deceased woman, Jackie Shields Lowenstein, in a safe deposit box rented by Wilding’s mother. The purported will named Wilding as Lowenstein’s executor and beneficiary, positioning him to inherit an estate worth more than $1.7 million.
Investigators determined that the will was also forged. Because Herrling claimed control over Wilding’s affairs, the document effectively placed Lowenstein’s assets under her control as well.
The Search for Charles Wilding
When police responded to the December 2020 welfare call, Herrling identified herself as Wilding’s trustee, the criminal complaint states.
Herrling told officers that Wilding was staying approximately an hour away with friends in Carpinteria, Calif., while she cleaned his Sherman Oaks house, which she said was in disarray and contained black mold. She couldn’t provide a current address for him, and officers couldn’t reach him at the phone number she gave them.
In October 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department opened a missing-person investigation after an anonymous caller suggested Wilding might be dead and that unidentified people were using his identity for financial gain, according to the complaint.
Investigators said Herrling continued to insist that Wilding was alive. The complaint alleges that she obtained a phone number and arranged for a man to pose as Wilding, but when detectives spoke with the impersonator, he couldn’t provide Wilding’s Social Security or driver’s license numbers.
Herrling paid another man $5,000 to lie about having recently seen Wilding. That man later told investigators that Herrling gave him a script instructing him to say he had seen Wilding with a “pocket full of money.”
A Body Taken to San Francisco Bay
Investigators found that Herrling and her associates moved Wilding’s body to her West Los Angeles apartment before attempting to dissolve it using a mixture of chemicals.
When that failed, prosecutors said the group dismembered the body, placed the remains in vacuum-sealed bags and transported them to Northern California. Another member of the conspiracy used a sailboat to help dump the remains into San Francisco Bay.
In the government’s sentencing memorandum, prosecutors alleged that Herrling purchased a cadaver bag, gloves, chemicals and a product designed to mask the odor of a corpse. They also said she posed for smiling photographs aboard the sailboat and returned to Los Angeles on a private jet.
Wilding’s remains have never been found.
The Fraudulent Sale of Robert Tascon’s Home
The criminal complaint alleges that Herrling also targeted Robert Tascon, who owned a home in Encino, another Los Angeles neighborhood.
Using the name Caroline Phenix, Herrling represented herself to a real estate developer as a licensed California attorney who worked with distressed property owners.
The complaint said an impostor carrying counterfeit identification posed as Tascon to execute sale documents before a notary. Later on, investigators compared the thumbprint in the notary’s records with Tascon’s real thumbprint and determined that they didn’t match.
Tascon’s home was sold for approximately $1.5 million without his consent, and investigators traced $950,000 from the transaction to a joint bank account controlled by Herrling and Kroth. Bank records also showed that Herrling used money connected to the sale to help purchase a residence in West Hills, Calif.
Tascon challenged the sale and sought to recover his home. According to police reports described in the complaint, he died by suicide in Texas in September 2022.
In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors argued that the loss of Tascon’s home, which they described as his final major asset, contributed to his death. The complaint also noted that Tascon had a history of mental illness and did not identify one definitive cause for his suicide.
How Caroline Herrling Was Caught
Federal search warrants were executed at Herrling’s current and former residences in January 2023.
Investigators reported finding stolen and counterfeit identification documents, passports, Social Security cards, birth certificates and credit cards inside an office Herrling identified as hers. The complaint said authorities also recovered a machine that appeared capable of artificially aging documents, a computerized device that could reproduce signatures and pages containing practice versions of June Wilding’s signature.
Herrling pleaded guilty in March 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
In March 2024, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong sentenced Herrling to the statutory maximum of 20 years in federal prison and ordered her to pay $3,887,051 in restitution.
“This defendant’s misconduct was both greedy and grotesque, causing profound pain to the victims and their loved ones,” then-U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said.
Herrling remains in federal custody serving that sentence. Kroth was sentenced to 200 months, or more than 16 years, in federal prison after pleading guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
