Parma Heights home health aide who stole more than $250K from people in her care gets prison sentence

Lisa Dotson was sentenced in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Tuesday to two years in prison as part of a plea bargain to charges that accused her of stealing more than $250,000 from people she cared for as a home health aide.

By Cory Shaffer

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Parma Heights home health aide who admitted to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from elderly and developmentally disabled people to fuel a burgeoning drug addiction was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison.

Lisa Dotson, 40, was also ordered to repay more than $250,000 total to six different victims she scammed over a period of six years.

Common Pleas Court Judge Shannon Gallagher imposed the sentence after several family members of those that Dotson scammed told the judge that Dotson had hurt them, but they still loved her and forgave her.

“That tells me you’re not a bad person,” Gallagher said to Dotson. “You made bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, and you let your addiction take over.”

Dotson also agreed as part of her plea bargain to testify against her niece, Latasha Wisniewski, who was convicted and sentenced last month to three years in prison.

Dotson took the stand at Wisniewksi’s August trial and detailed the pair’s scheme to fleece Charles Bauer, an octogenarian Korean War veteran and widower, out of his life’s savings. Wisniewski, 37, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Bauer after she feigned a sexual interest in him and asked him to pay for her breast implants, prosecutors said.

Gallagher credited Dotson for helping prosecutors build the case against Wisniewski, who maintained her innocence at her October sentencing and plans to appeal her conviction.

Dotson became close with several of the families of her patients, and exploited that trust to access and pilfer the financial accounts of her patients, prosecutors said. She routinely wrote herself inflated checks for the work she performed and took out short-term, high-interest loans in the name of a 79-year-old woman who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, court records say.

Dotson deceived a man with disabilities of his Supplemental Security Income by keeping his government-issued benefits card from him, withdrawing all of the monthly benefits - approximately $740 - from ATMs at the beginning of each month and lying to the victim that the benefits had been cut, the indictment says.

Bank records and other evidence showed that Dotson gambled at casinos and bought scratch-off lottery tickets on the days that she withdrew the man’s money.

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Parma Heights home health aide who stole more than $250K from people in her care gets prison sentence