Utah’s mother was faced with accusations that allegedly killed her husband and later published a children’s book on how to deal with grief.
Kouri Richins, 34, has been charged with mortgage fraud, counterfeiting, bad checks, money laundering, wire fraud and issuing patterns of illegal activity in the months of 39-year-old Eric Richins, 39, being poisoned in 2022.
The new charges have been more than two years since the three mothers were arrested and charged in connection with the murder of their husbands.
According to the indictment, Richins used the power of a lawyer in 2019 to obtain a $250,000 Home Equity Line (HELOC) in a home that her husband owned before he married without his knowledge. She is said to have invested money into the real estate business since then.
“The secret origin and continued existence of HELOC was the cause of tension between the defendant and Eric Richins,” the indictment says. “The defendant informed Eric Richins that he would pay off the loan and led him to believe that Eric Richins had paid it back. Helock was not rewarded on the day of Eric Richins’ death.”
Eric Richins then consulted an estate planning attorney in 2020 to say, “to protect three children in the long term by protecting themselves from the ongoing abuse recently discovered and financial abuse by defendants, and by preventing the defendant from managing their property after death.”
Richins is also accused of stealing more than $100,000 from her husband’s business and spending tens of thousands of dollars on his credit card, the indictment says.
Kouri Richins lawyers Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis said the new accusations were “very troublesome.”
“This sudden push to file new fraud claims two years later underlines the weakness of the state’s pending murder charges, as these fraud charges will not appear unless a conviction can be secured,” the lawyer said in a statement.
Kouri Richins’ arrest attracted the public’s attention as he published a children’s book titled “Ade You With Me?”
Eric Richins found himself unresponsive at his Utah home about 40 miles southeast of Salt Lake City after having a cocktail to celebrate his wife’s business deal.
Five times more “illegal” fatal “non-medical grade fentanyl has been found in his system, according to the office of a local medical inspector.
His murder trial is scheduled to begin in February 2026.
