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PO Box 2016
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ph: 877-257-0258
Fraud in the news
Senior citizens can be easy targets for scam artists
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The elderly woman made a terrible mistake in judgment -- she trusted her daughter.
The woman granted her daughter power of attorney. The daughter promptly deeded her mother's home to herself, mortgaged the home and defaulted on the mortgage.Preying on the elderly
Click for more...Financial Exploitation of aging relatives happens more often than you think.
by Frederick Melo
When money goes missing from a vulnerable adult, sometimes investigators need look no further than a close relative or longtime family friend and caregiver.
Take the case of a 73-year-old veteran with dementia, diabetes and schizophrenia, who had been placed in the Minneapolis Veterans Home after a car accident. Although he seemed to have assets, he wasn't paying anything. As he was about to be kicked out, authorities focused on his 69-year-old brother who had been handling his money.
The Dakota County Attorney's office this month charged Michael Anthony Rigney, of Eagan, with four counts of theft. Investigators say he used his brother's money for everything from hardwood floors to a Cancun vacation.
Elderly Lovejoy sisters claim fraud by scam artist
3/3/09
NEWS STAFF REPORTERTwo elderly Lovejoy sisters say they were no match for a smooth-talking home-improvement contractor with a history of fleecing older women.
Joseph M. Ralston persuaded the sisters to borrow more than $21,000 on their credit cards to replace a chimney he claimed was in disrepair, police say.
About a month ago, Ralston stopped by 85-year-old Dorothy Pannullo’s William Street home and told her 70-year-old sister, Carolyn Stevens, their chimney was falling apart, the sisters recalled Monday, a day after Ralston was arrested.
Ralston allegedly showed up with a crew of men who scaled the roof of the two-story house and began chipping away at the bricks and mortar joints to prove the chimney was in danger of toppling.
“He said our whole chimney needed to be torn down because it was bad,” Stevens said.
When she tried to argue that his men had just loosened the chimney with their hammers, she said, Ralston ignored her.
Pannullo says she feels she and her sister didn’t have a chance once Ralston had set his sights on them.
Twice, Ralston has spent time in state prison for stealing thousands of dollars from senior citizens in home-improvement scams that span two decades.
Nine years ago, when he was sent to prison for scamming three different women in Cheektowaga and Buffalo out of a total of $16,000, he had told the judge he needed professional treatment for his drug addiction.
In 1993, he was arrested for a home-improvement scam in the Town of Tonawanda that, authorities said, involved a group of individuals who had charged an 89-year-old Lackawanna woman $1,600 to fix three leaky faucets. In another case, a 90-year-old Lackawanna woman was billed for repairing a chimney that didn’t exist.
Other News
Man Who Bilked Thousands Gets 28 Years
by Greg Risling
February 23, 2008
An 81-year-old man was sentenced to 28 years in prison Friday in an investment scam that prosecutors say seeped across half the country and bilked 1,800 people, many of them elderly, of about $190 million.
PO Box 2016
Sonoma, CA 95476
ph: 877-257-0258
