Additional Coverage:
Utah Author Kouri Richins Faces Additional Charges Related to Husband’s Death
Kouri Richins, the Utah mother accused of poisoning her husband and subsequently authoring a children’s book on grief, is now facing a slew of new charges. These charges, filed Friday, include mortgage fraud, money laundering, communications fraud, forgery, issuing bad checks, and a pattern of unlawful activity.
Richins, who married Eric Richins in 2013, entered a prenuptial agreement that stipulated his business would transfer to her only if he died during their marriage. Prosecutors allege that starting in 2019, Kouri Richins began stealing from her husband’s business accounts.
Upon discovering this in 2020, Eric Richins established a living trust, naming his sister as manager of his estate in the event of his death. Kouri Richins was reportedly unaware of this trust.
The new charges detail a series of alleged financial schemes. Prosecutors claim that in 2021, Richins used falsified bank documents from her husband’s business to apply for mortgages.
She also allegedly wrote bad checks and laundered money between various accounts. In 2022, she allegedly defrauded a friend seeking a mortgage, using the down payment for other debts, ultimately leading to the friend’s eviction.
The “pattern of unlawful activity” charge encompasses allegations of fraudulently obtaining a life insurance policy on Eric Richins, attempting to murder him, and ultimately poisoning him with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule in March 2022. She then allegedly filed false insurance claims following his death.
A year after her husband’s death, Kouri Richins published a children’s book about coping with grief. She was arrested two months later and is currently being held without bail, also facing accusations of witness tampering. A trial date for the murder charges has not yet been set.