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| Crystal Gwinn |
Shortly after a 90-year-old Cody
woman was admitted to a nursing home last year, authorities say her
granddaughter in Texas began taking thousands of dollars from her bank
account. Between June and November 2018, Crystal Gwynn, 35, drained more
than $24,600 from her grandmother’s account while letting the woman’s
bills go unpaid.
Gwynn pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor
count of exploiting a vulnerable adult at a Sept. 4 hearing in Park
County Circuit Court. Under questioning from her attorney, she admitted
to recklessly transferring the money from her grandmother’s account to
one of her own — all without her grandmother’s knowledge.
Circuit Court Judge Bruce Waters ordered
Gwynn to serve a year of unsupervised probation, with 364 days of jail
time suspended, and to pay $205 in court fees and $25,004.48 in
restitution. She also received credit for the day she served in jail
after charges were initially filed in April.
The sentence imposed by Judge Waters
followed a plea agreement reached between Park County Prosecuting
Attorney Bryan Skoric and Gwynn’s attorney, Brigita Krisjansons. Under
the deal, an initial felony charge of theft was dismissed and the
exploitation charge lowered to a misdemeanor in exchange for Gwynn’s
guilty plea and her immediately paying the restitution; she paid the
slightly more than $25,000 the same day as her sentencing. In a Thursday
interview, Skoric said the deal was supported by Gwynn's grandmother,
who did not want he granddaughter to serve additional jail time.
Gwynn, who lives in Whitney, Texas, phoned into court from a noisy garbage truck that she drives as part of her job.
Toward the end of the hearing Judge
Waters advised Gwynn that, “In the future I would suggest if you have a
court date, maybe you ought to get to a spot where things can go a
little better.”
“You’re dealing with a felony charge
here,” Waters said, “and driving a garbage truck down the road while
we’re trying to ... do a change of plea on this is maybe not the best
idea in the world.”
Gwynn agreed and apologized.
She had received the power of attorney
over her grandmother’s affairs back in 2016, charging documents say, but
the trouble didn’t begin until the 90-year-old was admitted to the Cody
Regional Health Long-term Care Center in June 2018.
Just two weeks after the woman’s
admission to the center, Gwynn obtained an ATM/debit card for her
grandmother’s bank account and began taking out thousands of dollars at a
time, Cody Police Detective Rick Tillery wrote in an affidavit. For
instance, Tillery found that Gwynn withdrew $2,000 on June 21, while her
boyfriend withdrew another $2,000 the following day.
Over the next five months, she made purchases and took cash totalling $24,644.79, Tillery found.
“Crystal did not exercise her fiduciary
responsibility as her grandmother’s agent with the above money but
diverted the funds to her own use,” Tillery wrote.
Over that same time period, the detective
concluded that Gwynn made only two payments that benefited her
grandmother: spending a total of about $459 on insurance and utilities
on her grandmother’s mobile home in Cody.
However, Gwynn failed to make several
other payments on the insurance, utilities and rent — leading to
electrical service being shut off and the insurance being canceled,
Tillery wrote.
The exploitation was first detected by a
worker at the Wyoming Department of Health, Judie Petersen. While
helping Gwynn’s grandmother apply for Medicaid assistance for her care
at the nursing home, Petersen discovered that Gwynn had nearly depleted
the woman’s bank account, Tillery wrote. Her findings were sent to
Stacie Sullivan at the Wyoming Department of Family Services, who
contacted Cody police.
Gwynn’s power of attorney was revoked by
her grandmother on Nov. 9, 2018, with assistance from a social worker at
the long-term care center.
“Despite [the woman]’s age and some
hearing loss, she presented herself as very competent and mentally
capable of conducting her personal business,” Tillery wrote of a
December 2018 meeting with the grandmother, adding that she “expressed
surprise and disappointment that Crystal [Gwynn] would have taken
advantage of her.”
The woman also expressed concern that she would lose her mobile home over the trouble Gwynn had created.
The owner of the RV park wound up having
to take over the woman’s electrical payments to make sure the park’s
water line didn’t freeze; Gwynn’s restitution included repaying the RV
park owner for those expenses.
Noise from her sanitation truck initially
made it difficult for court officials to communicate with Gwynn at this
month’s sentencing, with Judge Waters having to loudly repeat several
of his advisements into the court’s speakerphone. For instance, Gwynn
twice did not hear the judge ask for her plea, prompting Krisjansons to
loudly call out to her client that, “You need to plead guilty to the
charge.”
Gwynn eventually shut off the vehicle, which reduced the background noise and feedback.
As the hearing reached its end, Judge Waters told Gwynn that she was “free to start your truck up and head on down the road.”
While on probation, she must obey the law and cannot have any contact with her grandmother unless the woman requests it.
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