Caregiver steals from elderly client to fuel gambling addiction
Posted: Wednesday, October 2, 2013
by Margaret Gibbons
A caregiver for a Cheltenham centenarian will have to spend time in jail for stealing almost $120,000 from the woman’s accounts.
Almost half of those funds were used to fuel the caregiver’s gambling addiction, according to court records.
Jeanette McMillian, 64, of Philadelphia, was sentenced to nine to 23 months in Montgomery County prison on felony fraud and theft charges. McMillian will also have to serve another five years of probation after completing her parole time, according to the sentence handed to her by Judge Joseph A. Smyth.
McMillian will also have to pay $119,241 in restitution to the estate of the woman who died in April 2012 at age 105.
The thefts were reported to police in November 2011 after the woman’s lawyer and one of two people who had power of attorney were reviewing the woman’s finances. The pair noticed that a large number of cash withdrawals were made from the woman’s accounts between January 2007 and October 2011, according to court documents.
The woman, who was in her early 100s, was homebound and needed 24-hour care, which was primarily provided by three caregivers.
The pair immediately fired all three caregivers.
They subsequently learned that the second individual with the woman’s power of attorney in 2007 provided McMillian with the elderly woman’s debit card and pin number to purchase groceries and pay for other expenses involved in the the woman’s care, according to court records.
Cash withdrawals from ATMs almost doubled once McMillian was put in charge of the debit card, the complaint said.
After McMillian and the other two caregivers were axed, a sobbing McMillian contacted one of those involved in her termination to apologize and explain she was “not a bad person,” according to the criminal complaint.
McMillian reportedly also told one of her fired coworkers that she had a gambling problem, court documents said.
In reviewing the elderly woman’s bank records, police determined that the debit card repeatedly was used to obtain cash from ATMs at the Sugarhouse and Parx casinos, according to the criminal complaint.
A Parx reward card issued to McMillian also showed that she was gambling at the facility the same day the ATM withdrawals were made, the complaint said.
Authorities have estimated that $53,000 in unauthorized ATM withdrawals was made with the debit card while it was in McMillian’s possession, according to the criminal complaint.
In addition, another $66,000 in unauthorized unspecified charges were made on the card during that same time period, the complaint said.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/00redesign/news/communities/willow-grove/caregiver-steals-from-elderly-client-to-fuel-gambling-addiction/article_5b04daac-3cbe-51b9-a54f-b02a7bd66f92.html
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