Solon resident charged with embezzling $157,000 from trust for disabled woman

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Solon woman is accused of defrauding a trust set up for a Hudson resident with multiple sclerosis and using the money to pay her personal expenses.

Teresita Sidoti, 52, embezzled $156,949.75 between 2009 and 2015 from a trust established to pay the medical expenses of Noel Zugay, who died in October 2014 at age 58, according to an investigation by the FBI and IRS.

Sidoti worked as Zugay's caregiver and controlled bank accounts for Zugay and the trust. She took the money by writing checks to herself, transferring money online and by making withdrawals in person, the U.S. Attorney's Office says.

She is charged with bank fraud and filing false tax returns. The charges were filed Tuesday via a criminal information, which usually means a plea agreement is forthcoming.

Federal prosecutors did not indicate what disability Zugay suffered from, but court filings in a 2015 lawsuit her family filed against Sidoti say Zugay was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1989 "and by 1998 was completely and totally disabled."

That lawsuit, along with another action taken in Cuyahoga County Probate Court, was dropped to let the federal government investigate, said Robert Higgins, an attorney for the Zugay family. The lawsuits accuse Sidoti of embezzling much more, as court filings say the trust had $590,000 in April 2006. By August 2013, it had a negative balance of $130, the family claimed in the litigation.

Zugay left behind two sons, and they've been "waiting for this day for two years," Higgins said.

The information says Sidoti became Zugay's caregiver and the trustee for the trust in 2006, the year it was established in 2006 by Zugay's parents. The trust's money initially came from Zugay's parents, but it also came from royalty checks from oil exploration rights for a well the Zugay family owned in Pennsylvania.

Sidoti also had Zugay's power of attorney, the information says.

In addition to stealing from the trust's bank account, Sidoti also diverted oil and gas exploration rights royalty checks to herself, the information states. She also did not report the extra money to the IRS, the government says.

In March 2012, Sidioti moved Zugay to Hudson Elms Nursing Home because the money in the trust was running law, prosecutors say.

A call left for Sidoti's federal public defender was not immediately returned.

The case is assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent.

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Solon resident charged with embezzling $157,000 from trust for disabled woman