Kansas widow loses nearly $500,000 in romance scam, DA’s Office says

A 68-year-old South Carolina woman who admitted to swindling an elderly Wichita-area widow out of $532,000 in a “romance scam” is going to be sentenced in the case Monday, officials said.

Kathy Heistand pleaded guilty in May to the mistreatment of an elder person and theft. As part of the plea, the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office will recommend five years of probation with the highest maximum prison sentence if Heistand violates probation, records show. A violation would mean 61 months in prison if the recommendation is followed.

The attorney’s office will have a news conference after the sentencing, partly to discuss the prominence of “romance scams” in the Wichita area, according to a news release.

The 55-64 age group is the most susceptible to romance scams, according to a 2019 Better Business Bureau report. People in the Midwest fall victim to romance scams more than any other type of scam and the median loss was $115, the report found.

The DA’s office said it is recommending probation because Heistand had a “lesser role in the fraud against the victim,” she helped in the investigation and paying restitution to the victim while on probation outweighs the benefit of sending the 68-year-old to prison. Sedgwick County District Judge Kevin Smith will have the final say.

Heistand agreed to pay $482,000 in restitution and work with officers to detail the online transactions with the victim in this case and victims in other cases, records show. Officials were able to recover $50,000.

The thefts happened between June and August 2020. An arrest affidavit released in the case details how it happened:

A 74-year-old “recently widowed” woman, identified as ET, was contacted on Facebook by someone who identified themself as Victor Patrick.

“Soon after ET and Patrick developed an online romance,” the affidavit said.

Patrick told ET that he was working on an oil rig project in the Gulf of Texas. As soon as the project finished, he would retire and move to Wichita to be with her.

In the meantime, he needed money and promised to pay it all back when the project was complete.

He asked her to set up a bitcoin account and send him bitcoins, which is digital currency. She couldn’t figure out how to set up an account so Patrick told her to send money to Heistand, who would give the money to Patrick.

Hiestand “allegedly also works for Diamond Oil, the same company where Patrick was allegedly contracted,” the document said.

Patrick provided Heistand’s name, address and phone number. Patrick contacted ET through “phone apps that are untraceable,” according to the affidavit. A search of Patrick’s name “yielded no results,” according to an investigator.

ET sent six cashier’s checks payable to Heistand in 2020: $119,000 on June 16, $113,000 on June 24, $100,000 on July 7 and three on Aug. 3 totaling $200,000 — for a total of $532,000.

ET’s “financial institutions” told her it was a scam but she didn’t believe it until investigators confronted her, the affidavit said.

When interviewed by an investigator, Heistand said “she did not know Victor Patrick and she only knew Patrick as ET’s significant other,” the document said. Heistand said ET sent her money as part of a business arrangement, which ET denied.

“(Heistand) refused to share further citing a confidentiality agreement,” the affidavit said.

Heistand also cited a confidentiality agreement to a second investigator but added the arrangement involved “Coin Flip,” which appears to be part of digital currency.

Heistand put $432,000 sent from ET into one bank and the remaining $100,000 into another bank and a credit union. The $50,000 from the credit union was able to be recovered, making the total “balance of misappropriations at $482,000,” the document said.

The bank account where Heistand deposited the $432,000 had more than $1.1 million deposited into it between March and August 2020. About $1 million was wired out to cryptocurrency banks, the document said.

“It appears as though a percentage of the money flowing in the (bank) account owned by Heistand was retained,” the affidavit said.

This story was originally published July 10, 2021 at 2:59 PM.