Since allegedly defrauding VA, man arrested after faking death

A Princeton man who may have defrauded the VA out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in disability benefits and then faked his death on the St. Croix River to evade law enforcement has been arrested in Missouri. Gregory Heimann Jr., 51, was arrested on August 21 in La Plata after being charged with making false statements to the government. He had been a fugitive for more than a year after the issuance of an arrest warrant from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Inspector General, on April 29, 2024.

Heimann had disappeared from his residence on April 19, 2024, after taking a canoe with his belongings to the St. Croix River in Forest City Township, near Danforth in northern Washington County. Initially, it was believed Heimann may have drowned. More than 15 game wardens, dozens of civilians, aircraft, watercraft and ATVs from the Maine Warden Service responded to the call and began a search that lasted several days in an attempt to find Heimann or recover his body. Although his disappearance was made to look like a possible drowning, after further investigation wardens determined that Heimann was, in fact, not deceased and his disappearance was ruled suspicious.

In October 2024, Heimann had been indicted for making false statements to the VA. He is alleged to have falsely represented in May 2023 that he had been wheelchair bound since 2004 and was unable to walk or stand. Before the indictment, he had been charged by federal criminal complaint for the same offense.

Heimann had served in the U.S. Army from 1993 to 1997 and began submitting claims for VA benefits in 1996. Following clinical exams, eventually the VA, in 2009, approved service-connected disability benefits for the loss of use of both feet, finding him 100% disabled. A 2022 letter from the VA indicated that he received approximately $5,000 a month in disability benefits, and a court affidavit states that since 2016 the VA had paid approximately $244,075 in benefits. The total amount he has received is not clear.

The affidavit by special agent Todd Sweet of the VA's Office of Inspector General documents that in June 2019 the Walla Walla Sheriff's Office in Washington state responded to a report of an assault involving Heimann, with a video of the incident showing him fighting another person and climbing a ladder. The next month police responded to another incident in Walla Walla in which Heimann walked across a road and punched his neighbor.

He then moved to Princeton, and in August 2022 he was issued a warning for operating an ATV on a public road. In September he was recorded dragging a chicken coop across his lawn. In May of the following year he drove his truck to a disability exam in Houlton and told the clinician that he had been wheelchair bound for nearly 20 years and could not walk or stand. After the exam, he was observed by the agent climbing into his truck and loading the wheelchair into it. He was then observed walking around and shopping in a hardware store in Danforth. A few days later, Walmart surveillance cameras recorded him walking and pushing a loaded shopping cart for an hour and 20 minutes. When he was interviewed by the agent in February 2024 and asked why he would appear in a wheelchair for a medical exam and later be seen walking, Heimann said he was afraid of losing his lifestyle and didn't want his VA benefits to change.

Two months later, in April, he disappeared. Investigators from state, local and federal agencies then conducted interviews and followed up on leads for more than a year to locate Heimann. On August 21, 2025, after receiving a collateral lead from the U.S. Marshals Service District of Maine Violent Offender Task Force, U.S. marshals from the Eastern District of Missouri identified a subject who matched the physical similarities of Heimann at an Amtrak station in La Plata, Missouri. The subject, who initially gave a false name, was then positively identified as Heimann and taken into custody by the marshals. He will be transported to Maine to face federal and possible further state charges.