MN: Maple Grove Councilwoman Accused of Financial Exploitation, Perjury

Maple Grove city councilwoman LeAnn Sargent has been charged with perjury and financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

According to a search warrant filed in Hennepin County last October, LeAnn Sargent became the center of a family financial mess after her 85-year-old father, Robert Bobleter, died in March 2012. The warrant explains Sargent's siblings became suspicious when $346 was all that was left in their father's bank account.
Investigators learned Sargent had been granted power of attorney for her father in 2008. He lived with Sargent and her husband for the last two years of his life while he received hospice care.

Investigators say Sargent also used her power of attorney to maximize her inheritance as her father neared death, taking out a $58,000 mortgage on a cabin that she was to share with her brother under a 2010 amendment to the 2008 trust agreement which previously left the cabin solely to Bobleter's son.

Just days after that mortgage was funded, Bobleter transferred $38,836.37 to pay an outstanding balance on the mortgage loan for Bobleter's Maple Grove home, which was to be left as a special gift to Sargent.

Sargent and her husband, Scott, voluntarily filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy a year before her father died. They swore by affidavit their combined gross annual income for 2011 was $88,000, but made no mention Sargent was receiving money from her father, or expected anything from inheritance.

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Maple Grove Councilwoman Accused of Financial Exploitation, Perjury