RENEE KERCKHOFF PLEADS GUILTY TO MONEY LAUNDERING IN FEDERAL CASE
- Aug 7
- 10 min read
Raymore business woman says she was victimized by feds,
and left with no choice but to plead
See PUBLIC RECORD at the bottom of this story for court documents related to this case.
By Allen Edmonds
RAYMORE – A well-known Raymore woman with decades of history in business and community service pleaded guilty last month for her role in a major money-laundering case that federal officials say cost numerous victims their life savings.
For her part, Renee Kerckhoff, who spent years at the helm of her parents’ heating and air conditioning firm, Rudroff Heating and Cooling following their retirement, said Wednesday she was victimized at the outset of the case by Nigerian scammers, then again at the end by authorities who had led her to believe she was helping to catch the criminals.
In the end, she said, she was left with no choice but to plead guilty and accept a reduced sentence to avoid losing all her family’s resources with an ill husband to take care of.
Her husband, former Raymore Mayor Pete Kerckhoff, has been in declining health for more than a decade. His condition continues to deteriorate, she said.
“I gotta ask the hard question here,” she said. After losing $280,000 to Nigerian organized crime figures more than seven years ago, she said she was forced to choose whether to press on for a trial she could no longer afford or accept a plea offer that would require her to pay $387,000 to the court in restitution and serve 30 months in federal prison.
“And I’ve got about $400,000 in legal fees already, so it’s a million dollar screwup.” She said had the case gone to trial, she believed prosecutors were going to push for 29 years in prison and potentially more than $1 million in restitution.
She said her attorney, Tab Lawhorn of Tyler, Texas, will argue for federal probation in lieu of the 30-month prison sentence at the upcoming sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.
She believes it will take place in October or November in the Eastern District Federal Court in Tyler, where the case was filed.
The Government’s Case:
In a 37-page trial brief filed July 2 in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Texas by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Austin Wells, Kerckhoff is labeled “a money launderer for romance scans.”
During her “involvement with Nigerian scammers, she laundered more than $500,000 and engineered the financial ruin of at (sic) dozens of victims,” the brief said.
“Kerckhoff’s path into this criminal world tracked a typical playbook: She was initially herself a victim of romance and investment scams; she was presented with the opportunity to recoup some of her losses by facilitating the victimization of others; and she greedily joined the scam by serving as a key waypoint for victim funds,” the brief said.
“Having over 20 years of experience in banking and various bookkeeping jobs, Kerckhoff leveraged her banking industry expertise to work around government regulations – or at least try to,” prosecutors said.
According to the government’s case, Kerckhoff met several people online through applications like Words with Friends.
She readily admits to that.
The conversations would be friendly and light, “and they’d say, oh, well, let’s just take this over to somewhere that we can chat. Let’s be friends, or whatever,” Kerckhoff said.
She said she had been duped by “both” romance and investment schemes.
According to the government, “these meetings developed into online text communications, and those communications turned into online romantic relationships.
“Those online relationships then developed into business relationships as her online boyfrends began to employ Kerckhoff to help them launder funds from numerous fraud scams,” according to the brief.
“The online boyfriends/business partners, who Kerckhoff never met in person, had several names, including Edison Solomon, Alan Max, Kelvin Andreas and Anderson Looney.”
The brief said that Kerckhoff received fiat currency from individuals in the form of wire transfers and would direct those funds as directed by her online paramours and business associates.
“Sometimes, those funds were wired to others’ bank accounts. Other times, Kerckhoff would purchase prepaid gift cards and/or credit cards and send those cards’ account numbers to her handlers via text message.
“And because several of her handlers were based internationally, Kerckhoff would take funds that were wired into her accounts and convert those funds into cryptocurrency, primarily BTC (Bitcoin), in exchange for a percentage of the transaction.
“Kerckhoff would take her fee in both fiat and cryptocurrency. Kerckhoff used numerous bank accounts and accounts with various cryptocurrency exchanges to make these conversions.
“The primary source of the funds Kerckhoff converted were proceeds of romance scams, business email compromise scams, investment scams, and scams involving several States’ unemployment benefits,” the brief said.
Communicating mainly through text messages, Kerckhoff received information from her handlers on (1) deposits coming into her bank accounts, (2) where to direct those funds, and (3) whether to convert those funds into cryptocurrency or some other monetary format, according to prosecutors.
The government said that Kerckhoff utilized cash, cryptocurrency and multiple bank accounts to send and convert various payment methods to overseas Nigerian organized crime members and their related associates.
“Kerckhoff repeatedly lied to banks to justify the volume and nature of her transactions, and banks closed multiple accounts of hers for suspicion of money laundering.”
While those banks included a large national bank, they also included a number of local banks.
“Yet Kerckhoff was not deterred and continued to launder victim funds.”
Over the course of the conspiracy, Kerckhoff laundered up to $550,000 through her accounts, according to the US Attorney’s office.
“Victims suffered losses exceeding $383,000 due to Kerckhoff’s criminal conduct,” the brief said.
“In sum, Kerckhoff utilized well-established personal and business bank accounts held in her name, in her husband Peter Kerckhoff’s name, and in the name of her business, Hummingbird Enterprises LLC, as well as her PayPal account to launder victim funds.”
Part of the government’s evidence that it had planned to use at trial was a six-minute audiotape between Kerckhoff and a bank employee in which Kerckhoff had presented herself as a different person in order to coordinate a wire transfer.
Prosecutors said numerous text messages between Kerckhoff and Nigerian organized crime members directing the scheme.
“These fraudsters almost certainly used pseudonyms when interacting with Kerckhoff and directing her where to direct funds that she received in her numerous bank accounts.”
While many of the victims interacted primarily with other handlers than Kerckhoff, they would instruct the victims to send the money to Kerckhoff, prosecutors said.
Operation Crypto Runner:
Kerckhoff’s 2024 indictment escaped local news outlets because it was filed in the Eastern District of Texas as part of an operation launched two years earlier called “Operation Crypto Runner,” an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces investigation into transnational cryptocurrency money laundering networks that facilitate the movement of fraud proceeds from victims in the United States to foreign criminal organizations.
The operation was a cooperative effort between the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tyler, Texas; the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
The initial announcement in 2022 came with the indictment of 21 defendants.
“Today’s announcement demonstrates the investigative capabilities of the Secret Service and highlights the success of our collaborative efforts through Operation Crypto Runner to dismantle and disrupt transnational money laundering networks,” said William Smarr, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Dallas Field Office, in a release that gained national attention “These arrests are just the beginning. We are committed to bringing each of the remaining perpetrators to justice.”
According to Thomas Noyes, Inspector in Charge of the Postal Inspection Service’s Fort Worth Division, “cybercrime has become an all-too-common way for foreign criminal actors to prey on Americans.”
In October 2017, the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act was signed into law. The EAPPA’s purpose, according to the Department of Justice, is to increase the federal government’s focus on preventing elder abuse and exploitation.
Subsequently, the DOJ launched the Elder Justice Initiative. Through the EJI, the Department has participated in hundreds of criminal and civil enforcement actions involving misconduct that targeted vulnerable seniors, according to a release that accompanied the 2022 indictments.
The EJI website contains useful information, including educational resources about prevalent financial scams so citizens can guard against them.
In August 2020, the Eastern District of Texas announced its own initiative, in partnership with law enforcement and private financial institutions, to identify and prosecute transnational elder fraud.
Kerckhoff’s eventual indictment is part of that initiative.
Victims associated with Kerckhoff’s case included an 84-year-old woman from Corvallis, Ore., who had been subpoenaed to testify against Kerckhoff in a hearing last month in Tyler.
She was forced to ask for either a cancellation of the subpoena or the opportunity to testify remotely because, as she told the court, she has significant mobility impairments that allow her to only walk a distance of 100 feet before she must stop and rest.
She had not flown in more than 30 years and cannot safely navigate airports or commercial air travel without substantial personal assistance.
As a retiree lIving primarily on monthly Social Security benefits, she told the court that upon receipt of the subpoena, “I became stressed and did not know how I could comply. I asked my son to assist me in communicating with the Government,” she wrote.
She told the court that she was willing to testify under oath by secure video conference or any other remote means directed by the court.
The woman’s story particularly moved Kerckhoff, when asked on Tuesday about it.
“It just breaks my heart to think that I took someone’s last piece of food out of their mouth.” She said if she would be allowed to write a check to make the woman whole, she’d do it.
But, she insisted, while the money came through her account, “there’s a whole lot to it.”
Guilty plea:
As part of her guilty plea, Kerckhoff agreed in writing that she knowingly and intentionally assisted people I later realized were engaged in fraudulent activities, she operated bank accounts with received wire and other monies obtained from individuals she later learned were victims of various scams and sometimes exchanged it for cryptocurrency.
She admitted that when a bank would question the source of the funds or the nature of a transaction, “I misled and made material omissions about my ownership of and entitlement to the funds, or the source of the funds, so as to obtain the money and so as to avoid detection and conceal the source of the funds.”
The cryptocurrency transactions were used to “launder funds that had been fraudulently obtained from victims by my co-conspirators,” she admitted, referencing specific transactions in 2020 and 2021. She agreed that the value of the laundered funds was more than $250,000, but less than $550,000.
“I admit and stipulate that I have learned that the victims of this offense suffered losses in the amount of at least $382,830 and that this is the baseline amount of restitution in this case,” she agreed in the guilty plea signed on July 6.
The case has been referred to the U.S. Office of Probation and Parole for a pre-sentence investigation. Once that investigation is complete, a sentencing date will be set, she believes in October or November.
Out of choices:
For Kerckhoff, the decision to plead guilty came down to practicalities. She still believes she was “stupidly” taken by sophisticated fraudsters, but didn’t knowingly participate in a criminal enterprise.
“I just hope maybe my story will prevent someone from losing everything they own. That poor lady that lost a whole bunch of money? It’s like, man, I want just want to call her up and say, ‘how much do you need?’ You know me, I have a big heart.”
And in fact, her lifelong involvement in community organizations and non-profits bears that out.
She was one of the original organizers of a program to fill in the food gaps for students in the Raymore-Peculiar School District before such programs had really taken off.
She’s a member of the Belton High School Hall of Fame. A 1977 BHS graduate, she is recognized for both her business acumen and her community involvement.
She spent 20 years in banking before completing her degree in Business Administration in 1997, where she graduated as class valedictorian. After graduation, she assumed the role as president of her family’s business, Rudroff Heating & Cooling. Under her leadership, the company was named a “Best of Belton” business in 2008, Business of the Month by the Raymore Chamber of Commerce, and one of the “30 under 30” businesses by Small Business Monthly of Kansas City.
She and her business were also mentioned twice on the floor of the U.S. Senate during debates on health insurance costs and inheritance taxes for small business.
She’s been heavily involved with both the Belton and Raymore Historical Societies, is a past board member of the Bi-County United Way and a past member of the Belton Educational Foundation. (Editor's note: The print edition lists her as past president of the Bi-County United Way because her biography on the Hall of Fame website lists her that way. She said Thursday she was not president).
She currently operates Hummingbird Enterprises, where she manages rental properties and consults with small businesses, particularly in the effective use of Quick Books,
“I just hope maybe my story will prevent someone else from losing everything they own.”
She is determined to tell her story in testimony before Congress – something she has done before and she’s convinced there is something to learn from her story.
She said she and her attorney are going to ask for full probation rather than 30 months in prison, “because I have to take care of Pete.” She said one of her daughters has agreed to take leave if she should be sentenced to prison.
“This is kind of like a rape victim that’s accused of being the perpetrator,” she said.
“The thing of it is, I did what they said I did. But I didn’t know that it was illegal. I didn’t know that it was money laundering, you know? I thought it was something else. I thought it was my investments, thought I was helping someone out. So I got involved, and right there, I’m sunk.”
Kerckhoff believes she’s a “criminalized survivor – a criminalized victim. I have to take what I can get, but this isn’t the end of it, because they’re not going to hear the end of it from me.”
She feels she’s been lied to and manipulated by investigators throughout the process. “It pisses me off, and the sad part is, I’ve lost faith in my fellow man, and I’m very skeptical of police officers. I didn’t used to be that way.”
PUBLIC RECORD: The Trial Brief is the government's narrative of Kerckhoff's involvement in the scheme. The Elements of the Case discuss how the various acts translate into chargeable offenses. The Factual Basis is Kerckhoff's signed admission that accompanied her guilty plea.
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