Prosecutors: former fence company operator used funds to pay prior fraud victims
By Jameson Cook
A 44-year-old Macomb Township woman pilfered over $90,000 from her father in a nursing home to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in restitution to victims of her prior scams via a fence company she operated.
Laura Marie Dietz, 44, entered a no contest plea to the charge Tof embezzlement between $50,000 and $100,000 on Tuesday in Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens in an agreement with Judge Jennifer Faunce that she will be sentenced Aug. 4 to 18 months in prison.
Dietz also will be required to pay $93,500 to her father, Robert Fischer, from whom she stole nearly $19,000 by cashing his Social Security checks and not making payments to his Shelby Township nursing home, and about $70,000 from the proceeds from the sale of his home, from September 2023 to October 2024, according to Assistant Macomb Prosecutor Danielle Strace, head of the senior crime unit.
The thefts were discovered after Macomb Probate Court Judge Sara Schimke removed Dietz from the guardianship for her father in October 2024 and replaced her with Guardian Care Inc., according to court records.
Dietz had claimed that her father was residing with her and paying his expenses when in fact he was living in the nursing home, Strace said. But Guardian Care discovered otherwise.
“The defendant was paying off victims from other fraud cases,” Strace told Faunce.
Dietz, who operated Dietz Fence Co., was initially charged in January 2023 for bilking several Macomb County residents out of several thousand dollars each in 2022 for taking money upfront to install a fence but failed to perform the work or refund the money, acts that earned her a “Hall of Shame” designation by TV news reporter Rob Wolchek. For those transgressions, Dietz repaid about $35,000 to seven victims by last September after pleading no contest in December 2023 to seven counts of larceny by conversion.
But after her convictions, she continued to bilk customers and was charged with several new cases. Last May, she pleaded no contest to two counts of false pretenses between $1,000 and $20,000 for incidents in St. Clair Shores and Shelby Township for which she will pay $3,750 and $4,000. She also pleaded no contest to writing a non-sufficient funds check for over $500 in the New Baltimore area under the agreement she will be sentenced Aug. 4 to one year in prison and repay nearly $12,000 to a Chesterfield Township fence company, court records say. An additional false-pretenses charge and a charge of fraudulently obtaining a signature will be dismissed at the sentencing, under the deal.
She will serve the sentence simultaneously with the embezzlement term, but the multiple offenses could reduce her ability to gain parole after she serves the 18 months.
She also will receive a sentence for violating probation of the prior convictions that also will be serve simultaneously.
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Macomb Twp. womans pleads to stealing $90,000 from father in nursing home
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