Kouri Richins’ Restitution Bill Says WHAT?!

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is HiddenKillers With Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:15)
$1,017,800.49, that's one number.
Here's the other $352,562.61.
On August 28th of 26th, a judge in Semicounty, Utah, ordered Kouri Richins to pay both of those amounts to two life insurance companies. Auto Owner's Insurance gets the million, TruStage gets the $352,000. The total $1,369,581.
The money is owed because a jury determined that Kouri Richins poisoned her husband, Eric, the fentanyl in March of 2022, collected the insurance payouts, passed his beneficiary and lied to both companies about how he died. Her defense attorney Wendy Lewis didn't contest the amount. She didn't argue the math. She asked Judge Richard Marzic for one thing, pause the payments while the appeal works its way through the courts. Marzic said no. He said state law required him to issue the determination and send the balance to the Utah Office of State Debt Collection. He told Lewis that if she finds legal authority to delay it, she can bring it back. So here's a question, everybody watching this case is already asking. Kouri Richins owes 1.37 million. She's serving life without parole. She has no job, no income, no business anymore. Does she actually have the money somewhere? Is there a bank account nobody found? Some asset she's hidden away? The answer is actually worse than no. Before the murder trial even started, Marzic ruled that Kouri Richins could not afford to pay for her own attorneys. She was declared an indigent. Summit County assigned her public defenders, and the county paid for every hour of their time. They were a trial that lasted weeks. Didn't they do a good job? Summit County is also paying for her appeal. A county official went on record calling the appeal unfortunate news for us and our taxpayers. The state convicted her. Now the state is paying to let her fight the conviction. Don't worry, it's probably not going to go very far. And now a judge has ordered her to pay back 1.37 million she doesn't have from a prison cell where she earns nothing. To two insurance companies she's defrauded. That's where Kouri Richins is right now. I'd love for you to give us your thoughts in the comment section and sub stack on YouTube as we work our way through this story. If you've not already done so, take the podcast with you, the audio form of the show Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski is what it's called. You can search it wherever you get podcasts. Press subscribe or even easier, there's a QR code on your screen. You're watching this on YouTube. It's right there. Scan it. Your options. You can go to Apple Podcasts, you can go to Spotify. There you go. Press subscribe. Kouri Richins was convicted in March of 26 on every count the state brought. Aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, two counts of insurance fraud and forgery. The jury deliberated for roughly three hours. May Marsic sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Plus consecutive terms on each of the remaining convictions. She filed a direct appeal to the Utah Court of Appeals in late May. That appeal is still pending with no future court dates scheduled. She also filed a motion for a new trial in June, claiming the judge was biased. A different judge reviewed the motion, denied it in July and said it was filed too late and failed to show evidence of bias. Kouri Richins is learning something. Just because shit comes out of her mouth doesn't mean everybody believes it. It's a new lesson that she's learning in life. She so far has surrounded herself with most people who go along with her shit. And now the tides have turned. Poor Kouri.
Those of us who have dealt with a borderline or a narcissist to the extremes of the style of Kouri Richins are sitting here like, let her burn, because it's so triggering. People like this don't learn. They don't get better. They get worse.
Let her sit in her cage. Let her rot. Let her tell herself her stories of whatever wrong happened to her in her life that caused her to be the way she is or that she's not in any way. Everybody else doesn't get it. You know, the mental gymnastics that these people work through to justify their very existence.
You can't fight them. You can't reason with them. It's insane.
They're insane. Narcissism always wins. Not the narcissist. It's like an infectious disease. It just kind of takes over the whole body. And eventually you just end up with this.
The Direct Appeal is the only route with any life left in it. And she needs new lawyers for it. Summit County is picking up the tab on that too. Utah inmates can work prison jobs to pay off debts. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the hourly wage in Utah's prisons ranges from 60 cents to $1.75. At the top rate, working full time, that's roughly $3,640 a year. At that pace, paying off $1,369,581 would take Kouri just over 376 years. The Restitution Order isn't the end of her legal problems. It's a line item in the middle of a much longer bill. Because the money she's ordered to repay is the same money the prosecution's forensic accountant traced through her accounts at trial. Brooke Karrington, the prosecution's forensic accountant, testified that Eric Richins carried roughly $2.2 million in life insurance policies. Kouri was listed as a beneficiary. One of those policies was $100,000 policy prosecutors proved she'd obtained through forgery using an incorrect social security number and what a forensic document specialist called a forged signature. According to Karrington's testimony, Kouri received approximately $1.35 million from those policies. After Eric died, she spent all of it within three months. Less than half went towards her debts. By September 22, six months after Eric was dead, Kouri Richins had roughly $800 left in her accounts. $800. She killed her husband for the insurance money. She got the insurance money. She burned through it in 90 days. And four years later, a judge ordered her to give it all back. To understand how someone spends $1.35 million in three months and has nothing to show for it, you have to understand the hole she dug before Eric was dead. Karrington testified that by March 22, the month Eric died, Kouri owed approximately $7.5 million. Her monthly payments to lenders are roughly $80,000. She had four separate payday lenders, each collecting $2,100 from her every single day. You think you got a payday loan problem? You ain't nothing compared to Kouri. $2,100 a day to payday lenders. Her real estate company, K Richins Realty, was bringing in about $170,000 in revenue while carrying more than $250,000 a month in debt service. In December of 2021, three months before Eric's death, her accounts showed 77 overdraft or insufficient fund transactions in a single month. The business had scaled at a speed that makes sense only if you understand it was never built to work. In 2019, Kouri Richins bought one property for $215,000. In 2020, she bought five properties totaling over $2.2 million. In 2021, she bought 15, totaling over $6.7 million. In November 2021 alone, she allegedly added $1.1 million in high interest hard money loans by closing on three more properties. The charging documents say she did this even though she lacked the financial ability to service the additional debt. She wasn't building a business. She was building a bonfire and throwing other people's money into it. The day after Eric died, Kouri closed on a $2.9 million mansion in Midway.