LOCKPORT – Kenneth C. Heitzenrater of Somerset, who stole more than $600,000 from a 90-year-old man, forcing him into assisted living, was placed on five years’ probation today.
Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas said she wanted Heitzenrater working to improve his chances of paying back the official restitution amount of $550,686, at a rate of at least $1,300 a month. She could have sent Heitzenrater to prison for as long as four years.
She warned the admitted swindler that she still could send him to prison for four years if he doesn’t pay the money.
Heitzenrater said, “My snowplow business, I pretty much lost everything because of the newspaper [publicity about his crime]. My construction business is practically nothing. I got to find other work. I don’t know how I’m going to find a job, being a felon.”
Farkas told him he would have to do anything he could find that was legal.
“It’s not supposed to be easy,” defense attorney Jon L. Wilson said. “He took money that wasn’t his.”
Heitzenrater, 50, of Hartland Road, has signed a civil judgment, acknowledging that he owes $624,002 to Matthew Pollack, 90.
“If there’s a default, it all becomes due,” said William Ilecki, Pollack’s civil attorney.
Assistant District Attorney Heather A. DeCastro said Heitzenrater drew the attention of Village of Barker police a couple of years ago by bragging openly in the village that he was a millionaire. The local officers started sniffing around and got the District Attorney’s Office involved.
DeCastro said it took two years to untangle all the records of how Heitzenrater misused a power of attorney Pollack granted him in 2010 to clean out the victim’s life savings. The result was that the money Pollack saved in hopes of being able to afford home care for himself disappeared. Diagnosed with dementia and supervised by court-appointed guardian Jill Plavetzki, he was forced into assisted living.
DeCastro, in what was believed to be the first-ever PowerPoint sentencing presentation in Niagara County Court annals, highlighted Pollack’s modest ranch house on Quaker Road, including a shot of a closet with two garments in it, and compared it to photos of Heitzenrater’s cars, recreational and all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and businesses set up for him and his wife Tara – Ken’s Eats and Treats and Heartland Quilts.
Heitzenrater said, “The only thing that was bought with Matt’s money was the two businesses and the Chevy Camaro, which I sold and gave the money back.”
DeCastro said promissory notes securing a debt from Heitzenrater to Pollack weren’t drawn up until after investigators from the District Attorney’s Office started questioning the suspect.
“What was important to [Pollack] was his independence and his garden,” DeCastro said. “He had a lot of money and he wanted it for later in life. That’s why he didn’t spend it.”
But Heitzenrater did. In 2011, “He did have a personal fireworks display on the Fourth of July. By all accounts, it was better than the municipal one,” DeCastro said.
The power of attorney signed in March 2010, when Pollack was still considered lucid, did not include a major gift rider. DeCastro called that “the smoking gun.”
“Mr. Heitzenrater had no authority to self-gift, not one cent,” the prosecutor said. “In my opinion, this was a case of greed. He took advantage of his relationship with this elderly gentleman. As [Pollack’s] mental capacity diminished, so did his bank account.”
DeCastro said an intern in her office, Anthony Rooney, deserves most of the credit for the line-by-line history of how the money was spent. It took Rooney the entire summer of 2012. The results of his work were stacked in the courtroom – seven cardboard boxes and an accordion folder, in all more than six feet high.
Heitzenrater said, “I met Matt 30 years ago and did all kinds of stuff for him … I was the son he never had and he was the father I never had. I guess I’ve ruined his trust in me. I’m sad. I’m sorry I can’t visit him anymore.”
That’s because Farkas imposed a restraining order barring all contact between the men.
“You were his trusted friend and now what you’ve basically done is destroyed the last years of his life on earth by taking away his chance to live in pleasant surroundings,” Farkas told Heitzenrater.
email: tprohaska@buffnews.com