A man who burglarized a Sherman Oaks home as the owner’s body lay decomposing inside was sentenced Thursday to more than 16 years in prison for his role in a sprawling fraud scheme.
Matthew Jason Kroth, 52, told the judge he was “ashamed and embarrassed,” by his actions, which included helping sell another man’s Encino home out from under him, resulting in his suicide.
Kroth pleaded guilty in October 2023 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. He is the second person to be sentenced as part of a criminal scheme that targeted the homes of Charles Wilding and Robert Tascon.
Caroline Herrling, 46, of West Hills, who led the conspiracy after Kroth brought her into it, is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in March 2023 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said Herrling dismembered and disposed of Wilding’s body to prevent the discovery of his death.
During Kroth’s sentencing hearing, United States District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered him to pay nearly $2 million in restitution to the estates of Wilding and Tascon.
Frimpong, who referred to the frauds as “particularly cruel and calculating,” acknowledged Herrling’s role in the scheme, but said Kroth “kicked the whole thing off.”
“This particular crime was not a crime of opportunity,” Frimpong said. “Mr. Kroth was looking for people to steal from.”
The scheme began in the summer of 2020, when Kroth admitted to breaking into Wilding’s Sherman Oaks home to burglarize it. Wilding, a shy man who lived alone, was known to his neighbors as a “recluse” and a “hermit.”
According to Kroth’s plea agreement, Wilding was alive the first time Kroth broke in and claimed to be doing a “welfare check.” Kroth said when he returned months later, Wilding was dead.
Kroth would later tell investigators that he was an “urban explorer,” which he said meant he targeted and burglarized neglected-looking homes in affluent neighborhoods, according to a criminal complaint.
He told investigators he stole jewelry and other valuables from Wilding’s home, according to the complaint. He also said he and others jointly looted the estate and bank accounts tied to Wilding. Kroth said he made off with $140,000.
Kroth provided co-conspirators, including Herrling, with Wilding’s personal identifying information and his mail so they could impersonate the victim and steal his assets, including his home and money in his financial accounts, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. The co-conspirators forged a trust document and power-of-attorney forms.
Daniel V Behesnilian, Kroth’s attorney, told the judge that his client first met Herrling in a Van Nuys court, where she was pretending to be a lawyer. Behesnilian said Herrling saw Wilding’s death as an “opportunity to get a lot of money.”
“She used my client,” he said. “She was the mastermind.”
Behesnilian claimed Kroth had a “violent break” from Herrling, because he wanted to notify authorities of Wilding’s body and she refused.
In a sentencing memo filed in in Herrling’s case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Andrew Brown laid out the grisly events that followed Wilding’s death. He wrote that Herrling and co-conspirators removed Wilding’s body from his home and attempted to dissolve it in acid and lye on the rooftop balcony of her apartment. They let it sit for a week, investigators said, occasionally stirring the liquid with a wooden baseball bat.
When that didn’t work, Herrling and her co-conspirators dismembered the body, placed the pieces in vacuum-sealed bags and transported them to the Bay Area, according to the Department of Justice. Brown wrote that Herrling crushed Wilding’s teeth and bones “to make it harder to identify his remains.”
In searching Herrling’s bank records, Lyndon Versoza, a postal inspector working the case, found a wire transfer in September 2021 from the sale of Tascon’s Encino home. Using forged documents, Herrling had sold the house out from under him for $1.5 million.
The following year, Tascon killed himself. He was 53. The police report noted that he had a history of mental illness and was involved in fraud litigation.
Despite his alleged break from Herrling, Kroth admitted in his plea agreement that he received into a joint bank account held with a co-conspirator most of the proceeds of the sale of Tascon’s home, which he knew was fraudulent and carried out with forgeries.
During the Thursday morning hearing, Behesnilian cited Kroth’s “horrible childhood,” stating that his client was sexually abused, became unhoused and later addicted to meth. He had asked the judge for a 12 year sentence.
“He is not beyond redemption,” Behesnilian said.
When he spoke, Kroth, in a white prison jumpsuit, apologized for his actions, telling Frimpong, “I am devastated by all of this and I’m at the lowest point of my life.”
In handing down her sentence, Frimpong noted that the thefts occurred “while Mr. Wilding’s deceased body was in his home.” While she said there’s no evidence Kroth was involved in dismembering and disposing of the body, she said he used Wilding “like a cash register.”
“He did not call the police, did not give Mr. Wilding the dignity of a proper burial, which he was entitled to as a human being,” Frimpong said.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
