Sauk Centre CNA charged in exploiting of clients at assisted living home

SAUK CENTRE — A nursing assistant took $980 belonging to a Getty Street Assisted Living resident, according to an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Health and a Stearns County Statement of Probable Cause. 

Amelia Story, 31, has been charged with one felony count on suspicion of fraudulent transactions with a debit card. 

Story is not named in the April Department of Health report, but the details of the incident are the same in court documents and Department of Health documents. 

Both describe a Getty Street Assisted Living staff person who used a client's debit card twice in October 2017. According to the Department of Health, the staffer also borrowed $20 from another client.

"Based on a preponderance of evidence, financial exploitation occurred," according to the public Office of Health Facility Complaints Investigative Report.

The first client reported a missing debit card to the assisted living Administrator Mary Jo Marthaler in November 2017. Marthaler canceled the card, asked for a financial statement and called police about the matter, according to the state report. 

"I helped investigate it," Marthaler said Wednesday.

She said she also fired Story after police found footage of the Sauk Centre woman at the ATM at times that aligned with the client's bank statement. 

Story told police the client "wanted her to go to Walmart to purchase some things for him and he gave her his PIN to do this," according to court documents. "The defendant stated that instead of going to Walmart, she went to Holiday and withdrew cash on both dates on her way home from work. The defendant stated that she needed the money to buy groceries for her family."

After she was arrested, a second Getty Street Assisted Living client told Marthaler that client had loaned Story $20. That client shared a note from Story seeking $20 to feed her kids and promising to repay $25 the following week, according to the Department of Health report.

"The administrator (Marthaler) said a few days later s/he discovered a note under his/her door from (Story) with $20 in it repaying Client #2 the $20 while denying s/he every borrowed $20 from Client #2," according to the Department of Health documents, which obscured the names and genders of people mentioned. 

Story is still listed in the Minnesota Nursing Assistant Registry with a license that expires in October 2019. There's a note in the online registry that Story "has a substantiated finding of abuse, neglect and/or misappropriation of property."

In April, Story pleaded not guilty to the charge in Stearns County court, according to the court record. She has a settlement conference scheduled for the end of the month. 

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Sauk Centre CNA charged in exploiting of clients at assisted living home