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Mother, Daughter Plead Guilty in Fake Will Crime

3 min read

A former Camden real estate agent and her 22-year-old daughter have pleaded guilty to federal crimes related to a fake will for a survivor of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion who later died in a car wreck.

Donna Herring pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in El Dorado to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and her daughter, Jordan Alexandra “Alex” Peterson, pleaded guilty Thursday to making a false statement to the FBI.

Herring admitted to creating a will after Matthew Seth Jacobs, who had survived the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010, died in a one-vehicle wreck in January 2015. 

The fake will left nearly all of Jacobs’ $1.7 million in assets to Peterson, instead of to Jacobs’ only child.

When FBI investigators first questioned Herring in July 2016, she first “denied knowing that the will was fraudulent,” her plea agreement said. “However, Herring later admitted that she knew the will was fraudulent.”

Herring told the FBI that she discovered a draft of Jacobs’ will at his house after his funeral that was, she claimed, even less generous to his son than the fake one she then created.

Herring said the draft will — which she said she “probably” destroyed —  left “everything” to her daughter, with whom Jacobs had had a romantic relationship. Herring said she created the fake will so Jacobs’ son wouldn’t be “left completely out,” according to the plea agreement. 

Herring created the fraudulent will using the website Formswift.com. She then had her sister and brother-in-law, Marion “Diane” Kinley and John Wayne Kinley Jr., sign the will as witnesses, “when at the time all three knew that Jacobs was deceased,” the plea agreement said. 

(The Kinleys also are facing federal charges in connection with the case. They have pleaded not guilty and their trial is set for April 30.) 

Herring said in the plea agreement that she was the one who placed the fake will in Jacobs’ gun safe so it could be discovered by her husband and a family friend.

At first, it seemed as if Herring had gotten away with the scheme. After the will was filed with the Ouachita County Circuit Court in March 2015, most of the assets of Jacobs’ estate were distributed to Peterson. Jacobs’ son received more than $300,000. 

Last year, Ouachita County Circuit Judge Spencer Singleton threw out the fake will in the probate case, which paved the way for the son, Jordan Jacobs, to receive his father’s estate.

Herring faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. She also agreed to forfeit the 2012 Lexus she received from the proceeds of Jacobs’ estate.

When FBI agents interviewed Peterson in July 2016 in connection with the case, she told them that she no longer had Jacobs’ cell phone and didn’t know where it was. The statement was false, according to her plea agreement, because she had hid his cell phone in a safe. 

Peterson faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. 

A sentencing date hasn’t been set in either case.

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