The Maine Warden Service confirmed it is investigating the man who was arrested last month after allegedly faking his own death and prompting a massive Down East search.
Gregory Heimann, 51, of Forest City Township, was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service in Missouri on Aug. 21. He is charged with making false statements to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as part of a yearslong scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits by pretending to be paralyzed for a decade, court records show.
He was notified of a federal investigation into that in February 2024. A month and a half later, police said he faked his own drowning by gathering belongings and putting them in a canoe on a river along the Canadian border in Washington County. The massive search for him included 15 Maine game wardens, dozens of civilians, planes, boats and all-terrain vehicles.
This week, the Bangor Daily News made a request under Maine’s public-access laws for records related to the search. The warden service denied it, citing an exception in state law that bars the dissemination of investigative records and saying it was due to an active investigation being led by the agency.
Heimann could be charged with false public alarm, a state crime targeting people who cause false information to be given to police who go looking for someone. In serious cases, that crime can be elevated to a Class C felony. Maine wildlife officials are also allowed to charge subjects for search and rescue operations, something that only happens in rare cases.
Wardens have not discussed the search for Heimann or how he evaded law enforcement between his disappearance and last week’s arrest in Missouri. An arrest warrant for him was issued 10 days after he was last seen in Maine, according to court documents.
Court records show that Heimann came under scrutiny in 2022, when the VA’s inspector general initiated a review of cases in which patients lost the use of their hands and feet. By the following years, federal agents had accumulated evidence that he could walk despite being deemed by a doctor as permanently disabled and paralyzed in 2008.
After confronting Heimann with the evidence in Bangor in February 2024, federal agents said he told them money motivated his actions. But they did not arrest him, allowing him to return home until he disappeared. The VA’s watchdog office has not answered questions about that decision.
BDN writer Sawyer Loftus contributed to this report.
