An expert witness with a specialization in forensic accounting took the stand on Tuesday and testified to the state of Kouri Richins’ financial accounts as prosecutors attempted to draw a connection between her growing debt and the death of Eric Richins as a possible motive. Prosecutors called Brooke Karrington, a trained forensic accountant with more than 30 years of experience as an expert witness, on the seventh day of the trial. Forensic accountants investigate bank statements and other key information to “understand the landscape” of an individual’s financial situation. Karrington said she reviewed “hundreds of thousands” of documents, including property deeds, loans, emails and the couple’s premarital agreement, in addition to interviewing accountants, realtors and insurance providers. Her testimony focused on Kouri’s house flipping business, which struggled financially in the years leading up to Eric’s death. The company — K. Richins Realty — was initially funded by a $250,000 line of credit that Kouri would use to pay for renovations on homes she hoped to sell. But she started to overdraft her accounts by late 2021, with more than $300,000 in bounced checks written to contractors, according to Karrington. Karrington alleged Kouri also tried to pay herself $60,000, but the transaction did not go through due to a lack of funds. “Something obviously was going on at this time,” Karrington testified. By the time Eric died in March 2022, Kouri had approximately $7.5 million in debt and was paying $80,000 a month to her lenders. Karrington said part of the issue may have been the rapid expansion of the business, which handled only one project in 2019 but was attempting to manage 15 different renovations by 2021, only two years later. She said Kouri also lost over $900,000 across the various properties she sold because of contractor costs, closing fees and other expenses. Prosecutors in their examination emphasized Kouri’s approach of acquiring loans to pay off previous debts, which would ultimately result in the company spiraling further into the negative. The line of questioning implied Kouri hoped to keep her credit score afloat to appear successful in negotiations with potential lenders. As an example, Karrington pointed to one house Kouri reportedly promised to flip for a friend at a lower cost. Prosecutors showed jurors a text exchange between Kouri and the friend, in which Kouri encouraged her friend to wire her $45,000 for a down payment to close on the property. The friend sent Kouri the payment, but the deal never went through. As soon as the money entered Kouri’s account, it was then spent on an outstanding debt payment, Karrington said. In a different email exchange with a creditor, Kouri portrayed herself as the head of a company with over 100 employees and said she had made more than $1 million on her last five deals combined. However, Karrington said there was no evidence that Kouri ever earned $1 million from those deals, especially because bank statements and real estate records showed she was losing money. Karrington also said the funds designated for payroll were inconsistent and infrequently paid, with only $1,500 to $2,500 earmarked for hypothetical employees depending on the month, a number much too small to support a staff of over 100 people. The only time Kouri used cash she had on-hand to fund her projects was in 2019, Karrington said. Karrington’s methodology also took Kouri’s tax returns into account, but she said they were “not correct” because Kouri provided false information to her tax preparer, potentially to make her business appear more successful than it actually was. “If the accounting’s not reliable, that doesn’t help me understand fully and accurately what was going on in her business,” Karrington said. Prosecutors questioned Karrington on the reasoning behind Kouri’s decision, pointing out that a lower reported net income would likely have resulted in a larger return. Karrington agreed in theory, but she said that, in Kouri’s case, it may have been an attempt to appeal to lenders to obtain more loans. Karrington’s testimony also touched on a large property in Midway, which has been dubbed the “Midway Mansion.” She said Kouri obtained a loan of $3.2 million to purchase the property for $2.9 million, which did not leave any funding to renovate and flip the home. After Kouri purchased the Midway Mansion, she had a net worth of more than $6 million, with around $8 million in liabilities or outstanding debt. Karrington specifically said Kouri was “in the hole” by about $1.6 million. “Kouri Richins was in financial distress, and her financial enterprise was collapsing, and but for a significant infusion of cash and capital, it would have continued to collapse,” Karrington said. “It was imploding. Her debts and liabilities far outweighed her assets, and if she had sold everything she had, it would not have been enough to get back to zero.” Kouri’s lenders ultimately foreclosed on and sold the Midway Mansion shortly after her arrest in 2023, but Karrington said the process had been in the works long before the criminal charges were reported because Kouri defaulted on the loan. Prosecutors pivoted to asking Karrington about Eric’s life insurance policy, which was worth around $2 million total. Kouri received $1.4 million of those funds after Eric died, with the rest being left to a trust. The money did not stay in Kouri’s accounts for long, though, Karrington said. The funds were deposited in three separate payments between June and September of 2022, but Karrington claimed Kouri had spent the entirety of the money on debt payments by the end of September, with only $802 remaining in her bank account by Sept. 19, 2022. Defense attorney Kathy Nester in her cross-examination insinuated there was no reason for Kouri to murder her husband for money when the investments are risky for lenders, too. She said if Kouri defaulted on her loan payments, then the properties she’d purchased would be handed over to her creditors, who could then flip the property themselves and sell it anyway. Nester also questioned why Kouri’s banks would continue to work with her if she had supposedly written more than $300,000 in bounced checks, but Karrington said it was likely because Eric and his company were registered with the same bank, and the bank didn’t want to ruin its relationship with a successful business over one or two problematic accounts. The defense attorney additionally claimed the tax returns were irrelevant, regardless of whether the information was falsified, because Kouri did not show the returns to any of her lenders to convince them to give her another loan. She also said Karrington did not know what financial agreements Kouri had with Eric regarding how to manage the family’s money, so it was possible Eric was aware of the debt before his death. Kouri is charged with several felonies in connection with Eric’s death, including aggravated murder, attempted homicide and fraudulent insurance claims. Prosecutors allege she poisoned her husband with a fatal dose of fentanyl in March 2022, while her defense maintains she is innocent. She has pleaded not guilty. She has been held in the Summit County Jail without bail since her arrest in May 2023. Her five-week trial is expected to end on March 27. 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