Woman Convinces Disabled Man to Give Her $27K - and it's Legal!

The FOX6 Investigators were recently contacted by a Milwaukee mom at her wits end, trying to protect her disabled son from financial ruin.

After looking into the story, we found a loophole in Wisconsin law that makes it easy to prey on society’s most vulnerable.

Patrick Meyer thinks this woman is his friend.

Patrick is 45-years-old and has cerebral palsy. He works in the kitchen at St. Ann’s Center in Milwaukee, an adult daycare. His mom says he’s mildly mentally disabled, and she’s done her best to preserve his independence even though he still lives at home.

She even taught him how to balance a checkbook so he can control his own finances.

The first red flag — a cruise.

Patrick thought he was going to go on a cruise in August.

“A three hundred dollar check and a five hundred dollar check just given to this person and there was no paperwork or anything or a receipt of a cruise being scheduled,” says Saganski.

The second red flag — a bounced check.

And then, his mom says, she saw it happen.

“I saw him with her filling out a withdrawal slip from the bank, not from his checkbook,” she said.

When his mom checked his bank account, she says she was floored by what she discovered. Almost every month for the last two years Patrick had given thousands of dollars away.

Saganski estimates Patrick has given away nearly $27,000 in personal checks and cash since 2011.

She says most of that money has gone to a Milwaukee woman named Carmen Lacey. Lacey’s a home healthcare worker, which means she takes cares of the elderly and disabled for a living.

She’s also a felon: drugs, battery, and burglary all part of her criminal history. And even though she got out of prison years ago she’s still on parole, taking care of some of Milwaukee's most vulnerable adults.

But Lacey won’t have to pay for anything, most likely, because what she did isn’t a crime. Under Wisconsin law, it’s not financial exploitation because Patrick wasn’t forced or coerced. He gave the money willingly because he wanted to.

Milwaukee Police call it “heartbreaking,” but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal, at least not under current law.

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Woman convinces disabled man to give her $27K, and it’s legal