The son of a late Los Angeles art dealer is expected to be sentenced Thursday for participating in a complex identity theft scheme that preyed on vulnerable people by forging wills and trusts to gain control of victims’ estates.
James Kantor, 46 — the third member of the conspiracy to be sentenced — pleaded guilty in October 2024 in downtown Los Angeles to one federal count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to court documents, the scheme’s participants searched for properties in affluent neighborhoods that appeared unkempt. Using online mapping programs and traveling through nicer neighborhoods, the accomplices looked for algae-filled swimming pools or overgrown shrubs to identify houses with vulnerable victims who were unable to care for their properties.
On at least one occasion, Kantor looked for a person who had recently died while owning property and lacking heirs, so that co-conspirators could steal that person’s property undetected, according to his plea agreement filed in L.A. federal court.
Kantor admitted forging a trust agreement and certification of trust for June Wilding, who was deceased, so that her property could be controlled by the scheme’s leader, Caroline Herrling, 46, of West Hills. Kantor also created a fraudulent petition to speed the transfer of June Wilding’s property into the fraudulent trust controlled by Herrling.
Members of the conspiracy forged a power of attorney form so that they could pretend that June Wilding’s son, Charles Wilding Jr., who was also dead by that time, supported the disposition of the Wilding assets for the benefit of the conspirators, the plea agreement states.
Kantor — who had hoped to steal $2.6 million from the victims — admitted receiving at least $64,000 stolen from the estates of mother and son, court papers show.
The scheme began in the summer of 2020, when Matthew Kroth, 52, of Studio City, admitted to breaking into Charles’ Sherman Oaks home to burglarize it. Wilding Jr. had a reputation in the neighborhood as a “recluse,” prosecutors said.
Kroth’s plea agreement says Charles was alive the first time Kroth broke in, claiming to be doing a “welfare check.” At some point in September 2020, the man died — investigators are uncertain how — and the schemers took over the property while his body decomposed.
Rather than reporting the death, Kroth and others left the man’s body in the house while they looted his assets.
Herrling used a forged power-of-attorney form so she could pretend to act on the victim’s behalf while stealing his real estate and financial accounts.
Federal prosecutors say participants dismembered and disposed of the victim’s body to prevent the discovery of his death. The remains have never been found.
In October 2021, law enforcement began investigating the case when neighbors reported Charles missing. According to documents filed in Los Angeles federal court, Herrling identified herself to police as a close friend of the victim and his family.
She also was listed as the trustee of the victim’s family trust — which purportedly had been created by the victim’s mother, who died in 2017 — but in fact was a forgery. She told police that the victim had moved from Sherman Oaks to Carpinteria, which was not true because the victim was already dead.
Kroth pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. He was sentenced Feb. 5 to more than 16 years behind bars.
Herrling is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in March 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Kantor’s late father, Paul Kantor, was a pioneering Los Angeles art dealer whose galleries provided a showcase for leading modern and contemporary artists in the 1950s and ’60s. He died in December 2002 at age 83 from complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to media reports.
The government is asking for a prison term of four years, three months for James Kantor.
“A disproportionate number of defendants come from disadvantaged backgrounds,” federal prosecutors wrote in sentencing papers. “These defendants usually had limited employment and educational opportunities, and came from high-crime areas, helping to explain their own criminality. That is not (this) defendant.”