Housekeepers used armed guard to swindle NC dementia patient out of $400K, feds say
A woman with dementia who lived alone in South Carolina was kept from her friends and family for two years while her purported caregivers conned her out of close to half a million dollars, prosecutors say.
Now they face decades in prison.
Gerald Maxwell Harrison, 53, and Elizabeth Robin Williams, 55, pleaded guilty to charges relating to the fraud, which took place at a senior citizen community in South Carolina and multiple residences in Charlotte and Mint Hill between 2014 and 2016, federal prosecutors said in a news release Wednesday.
A third person accused in the scheme, Donna Graves, has pleaded not guilty, according to the release.
“Court records show that Harrison, Williams, and Graves isolated the victim from her friends and family, and induced the victim to give them power and control over her financial and personal affairs,” the release states.
According to a federal indictment filed in September, Williams and Graves were introduced to the victim — who is not named and has since died — when they were hired to provide housekeeping services at her residence in Indian Land, South Carolina, in early 2014.
The woman was “an elderly widow who lived alone and suffered from dementia and other physical and mental challenges,” prosecutors said Wednesday.
In time, the trio drained her bank accounts, opened new ones, maxed out her credit cards, tried to sell her home, and cashed her pension and Social Security checks, according to the indictment. Williams then reportedly used the stolen cash to sell purses on eBay and run a weight loss supplement business.
Prosecutors said they also sold “dozens of pieces” of the woman’s jewelry.
In October 2015, Williams and Graves hired someone from a security company who carried a gun to “protect” the woman and “monitor and control her interactions with other people,” the indictment states.
Williams and Graves then falsely accused the victim’s brother — who lived in the same assisted living community — of trying to take control of her money and had him removed as her power of attorney, according to the indictment.
Around the same time, prosecutors said the armed guard threatened the victim’s brother when he tried to visit her by placing a gun in his back and telling him he wasn’t allowed to see or speak to her without permission from Williams, Harrison or Graves.
The brother reportedly asked law enforcement to intervene, but the trio had already relocated his sister to an apartment in Charlotte.
He later hired a private investigator to track them down, at which point the victim was moved again to a home in Mint Hill, according to the indictment.
It wasn’t until most of the woman’s assets were depleted and her health started deteriorating in early 2016 that the trio got in touch with a friend of the victim who lived out of state, the indictment states.
When the friend came to take the woman to a nursing home in New York and asked about her checkbook, credit cards, mail and bank information, prosecutors said Williams claimed she didn’t know where anything was.
After the woman left, Harrison reportedly tried to sell her house in South Carolina, which prosecutors said had been fraudulently transferred to him.
A nurse who later examined the victim said she “had pressure sores indicating neglect and lack of proper care,” the indictment states. Once she was taken from their care, the victim “required immediate surgery to treat medical problems that occurred and worsened while she was living with Williams and Harrison.”
The woman eventually died in December 2016 at the facility in New York.
On Wednesday, Harrison pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, interstate transportation of stolen property and money laundering conspiracy, according to the news release. Williams pleaded guilty to the same charges on May 14.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines, prosecutors said.
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Housekeepers used armed guard to swindle NC dementia patient out of $400K, feds say."
