Restitution Figures Handed Down in Fake Will Case

Donna Herring walks outside of the U.S. District Courthouse in El Dorado on Tuesday. She was sentenced to 41 months in prison for forging a fake will for Deepwater Horizon survivor Matthew Seth Jacobs. (Mark Friedman)

After Donna Herring and her sister, brother-in-law and daughter were sentenced for their parts in an infamous fake will scheme, the federal judge handed down how much they will have to pay in restitution.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Susan O. Hickey ordered Herring, her sister, Marion “Diane” Kinley, and Herring’s brother-in-law, John Wayne Kinley Jr., to pay a total of $132,965 in restitution to Jordan Jacobs of Camden.

Herring’s daughter, Jordan Alexandra Peterson, wasn’t ordered to pay restitution.

Jacobs is the son of Matthew Seth Jacobs. Matt Jacobs survived the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010 and had received sizable financial settlements before he died at 34 in a one-car accident in January 2015.

After his death, Herring created a fake will that left nearly all of Jacobs’ $1.7 million in assets to Peterson, with whom Jacobs had had a romantic relationship, instead of Jacobs’ only child, who was 17 at the time of his father’s death. Jordan Jacobs eventually received about $300,000 from the estate before questions surfaced about the will’s authenticity.

Federal prosecutors were seeking restitution of nearly $200,000. (There was about $925,000 in cash in the estate, and federal agents seized about $720,000 of that money and ultimately returned it to Jordan Jacobs.)

Herring was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. John Wayne Kinley was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for aiding and abetting wire fraud.

His prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release. Diane Kinley was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They have to report to prison on Jan. 22.

Peterson was sentenced to three years of probation for making a false statement to the FBI.