Real Life Version of Movie “Heartbreakers” Plays Out in Conneticut Court
August 26, 2009 – 1:49 pm
Heartbreakers was a movie that came out in 2001 that dealt with a mother (played by Sigorney Weaver) and daughter (Jennifer Love Hewitt) team who conned millionaires out of their money. While Barbara Niedkowski isn’t Sigorney Weaver and her daughter, Delilah Campbell, is no Jennifer Love Hewitt, they’re stories share a similar path to the scripted movie.
The mother and daughter aren’t nearly as ambitious as the duo on celluloid. They’ve only stolen nearly a quarter of a million dollars using stolen credit card information to buy merchandise and services. Also, this story doesn’t have a happy ending for them. You could say it has one for the victims however. The 57 year old mom and 22 year old daughter were sentenced in a Connecticut court yesterday. The mom, who plead guilty to suspend her daughter’s sentence (ah, doesn’t that just warm the heart?), was given five years in prison on identity theft charges.
Still, the story could be long from over for the mother/daughter team’s victims. Even the judge acknowledged the long standing effect of identity theft when he said that the real crime is that some victims of the scheme will be dealing with the effects even after Niedkowski is released. The defense lawyer stated that Niedkowski’s only regret was that she involved her daughter Delilah in the scheme. One would think that her only regret was that she tried the scheme in the first place, but it’s hard to accurately identify the criminal psyche.
Tags: credit fraud, daughter, heartbreakers, ID theft, mom, mother, mother daughter, scheme
