People who believed their criminal records had been cleared were still exposed to the consequences of those convictions, Indiana State Police say. Some missed court appearances and later faced arrest warrants or jail. Prosecutors say Heather Anne Textor, a 41-year-old Lowell woman who worked at a Merrillville law firm, faces 42 charges in connection with an alleged scheme lasting roughly five years; the paperwork she gave clients did not expunge their records.
Textor worked the front desk at the Law Office of Weiss, Schmidgall and Hires, P.C. on West 73rd Avenue in Merrillville. The firm was founded by the late Garry A. Weiss and is now run by attorneys Christopher R. Schmidgall and Amanda C. Hires, according to the firm's own attorney listing. Police say Textor started there in 2016. CBS Chicago reported that investigators allege she took money from people seeking legal help and gave them fabricated expungement documents, including forged judges' signatures and names of attorneys who had not represented them. Police said the firm is not under investigation and is cooperating fully.
How the Scheme Allegedly Worked
Per the same account, Textor allegedly used CashApp and PayPal accounts set up in the law firm's name to funnel payments into her own personal bank account, and relied on receipts kept separate from the firm's computerized client system to keep the scheme invisible to her employer. Investigators say she typically took between $800 and $1,500 from each victim. When clients grew suspicious and started asking questions, the report notes she allegedly texted them false information about their attorneys or other lies to keep the scheme going.
Prosecutors say the scam ran for approximately five years before it finally came apart. Indiana State Police became aware of the scheme in November 2023, after a victim tried to buy a firearm and discovered during a background check that a conviction he believed had been expunged was still on the books. The same man had reportedly been denied a job a couple of years earlier because of that same conviction.
Victims Caught Off Guard by Fake Paperwork
The fallout for other victims was far worse than a denied job or a blocked gun purchase. Several people went to jail because of Textor's actions, police said, and at least two victims discovered they had outstanding arrest warrants after being pulled over in traffic stops, having missed court appearances tied to charges they believed had already been expunged. Indiana State Police say some identified victims still did not realize their documents were fraudulent or that they had been victimized at all.
Sgt. Glen Fifield, speaking on the case, said simply that there are lots of reasons someone might want to wipe a criminal record clean. He described Textor as having no care for her victims and acting only for herself. Indiana State Police say they are now seeking out other possible victims who may not yet know their paperwork was never real.
Why the Fake Documents Did So Much Damage
The scale of harm traces directly back to how unforgiving Indiana's actual expungement law is. Under Indiana Code § 35-38-9, known as the Second Chance Law, individuals seeking a conviction expungement face mandatory waiting periods ranging from five years for misdemeanors to eight years or more for felonies, according to the Indiana General Assembly. Just as critically, state law allows a person to receive a conviction expungement only once in their lifetime, meaning anyone who unknowingly accepted one of Textor's forged documents may have believed they had already used their one and only shot at a clean record.
Legitimate expungements also come with real legal teeth once granted: Indiana Code § 35-38-9-10 bars employers, landlords, and state licensing agencies from discriminating against people whose records have been officially sealed, per Indiana Legal Help. Because Textor's victims never actually had that legal protection, they were left exposed to the exact job and housing denials the law was designed to prevent. Filing a real conviction expungement also requires a standard $157 civil court filing fee paid directly to the county clerk, a cost that cannot be bypassed through private receipts like the ones police say Textor used instead.
Felony Counts and Potential Penalties
Textor faces 13 counts of forgery, five counts of fraud against a financial institution, five counts of fraud, two counts of counterfeiting, and seven counts of fraud with enhancing circumstances, along with three misdemeanor counts covering fraud and theft. Forging a judicial signature or uttering a falsified court document is classified as a Level 6 felony under Indiana Code § 35-43-5-2, which carries a penalty range of six months to 2.5 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, according to codes compiled by FindLaw. Fraud and identity deception charges escalate to Level 5 felonies, carrying one to six years in prison, when a scheme causes total financial harm of $50,000 or more.
Lake County Prosecuting Attorney Bernard A. Carter announced Textor's arrest, which came Thursday, with her first court appearance held the same day. Carter has served as the county's chief prosecutor since 1993 and is the longest-tenured elected Black prosecutor in Indiana history, having previously served as a Lake Superior Court judge before being appointed prosecutor by then-Governor Evan Bayh. The investigation was led by the Indiana State Police Lowell Post, known as District 13, which oversees state law enforcement operations across seven Northwest Indiana counties including Lake and Porter.
Textor's bail was set at $150,000, meaning she must post 10 percent, or $15,000, to be released. She remained held at the Lake County Jail as of Friday morning and is due back in court October 20 for a bail hearing. Indiana State Police noted that expungement services can apply to non-violent criminal charges and traffic violations, the exact kind of relief many of her alleged victims thought they were finally getting.
How to check an expungement
The Indiana State Police says that after an expungement or seal is granted, the local court forwards the verified petition and granting order to ISP for processing. That general procedure does not establish whether a particular case has been reviewed. The Indiana Judicial Branch’s Lake County page advises people seeking case documents that are not available online to contact the local court directly. For context on the volume of filings, WFYI, citing state court data obtained by the Indiana Capital Chronicle, reported that Indiana courts opened 10,156 expungement cases in 2025, up from 6,660 in 2016. Those figures count cases, not necessarily individual people or convictions, and do not by themselves show how many petitions were granted.
