Couple Charged with Swiping $500K+ from Senior

Photo Courtesy of Maps Queens

Working in the family’s Corona home, Luz Tejeda developed a friendly relationship with the elderly victim.

By Forum Staff

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced Friday that Luz and Rosendo Tejeda, of Manhattan, have been charged with grand larceny and other crimes for allegedly swindling a disabled woman and her elderly mother out of more than $500,000. The couple is accused of switching bank accounts to have the victim’s monthly annuities deposited into their personal account between November 2016 through September 2020.

Rosendo Tejeda, 63, of Lenox Avenue was arraigned Wednesday before Queens Criminal Court Judge Mary Bejarano on a complaint charging him with grand larceny in the second degree, criminal possession of stolen property in the second degree and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person.

Luz Tejeda, 56, now of East 14th Street in Hazelton, PA., was arraigned late last night before Queens Criminal Court Judge Bejarano on a complaint charging her with grand larceny in the second degree, criminal possession of stolen property in the second degree, attempted grand larceny in the second degree, identity theft in the first degree, scheme to defraud in the first degree and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person. The defendants’ return date is February 5, 2021. If convicted, they both face up to 15 years in prison.

District Attorney Katz said, defendant Luz Tejeda was hired to coordinate home care for the 43-year-old victim who was born deaf, blind, immobile and intellectually disabled. A lawsuit alleging medical malpractice was filed on behalf of the victim and when a settlement was reached the cash was disbursed via monthly annuity payments. Working in the family’s Corona home, defendant Luz Tejeda developed a friendly relationship with the elderly mother. The senior – who does not speak or read English – trusted the worker and her husband and signed documents giving the Tejedas shared guardianship of her daughter.

Continuing, according to the charges, in the fall of 2016 the defendants allegedly reached out to the financial services company disbursing the monthly annuity and requested the deposits be diverted to their personal bank account. In June 2019, the defendants also submitted a letter supposedly written by the incapacitated victim to change her physical address to their own Manhattan home.

In addition to the re-direction of annuity payments in excess of $500,000 to their own personal accounts, according to the charges, defendant Luz Tejeda allegedly completed an application with Settlement Resources of New York, Ltd to borrow more than $145,000 against the victim’s future annuity payments and further received loan advances totaling $9,400 that were deposited into the defendant’s personal accounts.

This commencement of the criminal investigation stopped the disbursement of monies to the defendants in September 2020.

DA Katz said the elderly mother was under the impression the monthly deposits had stopped due to the financial institution filing bankruptcy. The scheme was discovered when a new, kind and compassionate health care attendant attending to the elderly mother realized the household was not receiving monies to support the mother and her incapacitated daughter and made a referral to the Queens County District Attorney’s Elder Fraud Unit.

If anyone believes they are being victimized, please call the Elder Fraud Unit at (718) 286-6578.

 

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Couple Charged with Swiping $500K+ from Senior

Couple swindled nearly $136,000 from woman, 87, police say

Christopher and Lauren Kydes

An 87-year-old woman was moved into a retirement home, her condo was sold, and her bank accounts were cleaned out after a Lighthouse Point couple took over her life, Pembroke Pines police said.

Christopher Scott Kydes, 57, and Lauren Cohen Kydes, 55, are accused of stealing nearly $136,000 from the woman.

They were arrested Thursday and are jailed without bond on charges of elderly exploitation and theft, records showed.

According to arrest reports filed in the case, Christopher Kydes befriended the woman, obtained power of attorney over her affairs, moved her into a Deerfield Beach assisted living facility, added his name to her bank account and to her will, and threw out all her belongings before his realtor wife Lauren Kydes sold the woman’s Century Village condo.

Investigators say the Kydeses pocketed an estimated $135,895.

The investigation started in May of last year when an out-of-state relative became concerned after losing contact with the woman.

The relative alerted authorities and when police did a welfare check they learned the woman had been moved to an assisted living facility. Detectives found her and unraveled what had happened, police said.

The yearlong investigation revealed Christopher Kydes became a trustee on the woman’s trust, became a joint account owner on the woman’s bank accounts, obtained a quit claim deed on the woman’s Century Village condo, became her healthcare surrogate, and was added to her will as a beneficiary.

A court-appointed guardian was assigned to the woman to stop the Kydeses from accessing any of her accounts, police said.

Bank records showed the woman’s retirement accounts were emptied and some of the woman’s funds were deposited into businesses owned by the Kydeses. Funds were then funneled between business accounts for their personal use, investigators said.

Police suspect there may be more victims and they are asking anyone who knows the couple or has information about any fraudulent activities to contact Pembroke Pines police at 954-431-2200. Anonymous tips can be sent to Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477 or online at browardcrimestoppers.org.

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Couple swindled nearly $136,000 from woman, 87, police say

Champaign man who swindled elderly woman in his care gets 7 years

Mark A. Stites

URBANA — A rural Champaign man who admitted he stole thousands of dollars from an elderly woman who was his neighbor as he grew up is headed to prison for seven years.

Judge Heidi Ladd also ordered Mark Stites, 64, to repay $5,000.01 to the estate of the woman from whom he stole over a period of years while he acted as her caretaker, power of attorney and tax preparer.

"He siphoned funds from a dependent, vulnerable, helpless, victim. He knew not to commingle the funds. He was draining her assets to the point she had to go on public aid," said Ladd.

Stites pleaded guilty in May to financial exploitation of a person over 80, admitting that between June 2007 and February 2013, he withdrew more than $5,000 from two bank accounts belonging to the woman and used it fraudulently.

The woman was 96 when she died in 2016, just three months after the criminal charges had been filed against Stites, and three years after the financial improprieties first came to light.

The veteran jurist expressed frustration that the paper trail presented her by Assistant State's Attorney Joel Fletcher and defense attorney Blake Weaver of Urbana could not paint a clear picture of what happened to the money that once belonged to the elderly widow who spent her last days in the Champaign County Nursing Home supported by taxpayers.

Ladd heard testimony that the woman's husband, who preceded her in death in 2007, left money to Stites to care for his wife. Some of it he intended for Stites; most was for the care of his wife, who needed long-term nursing care.

Testimony also showed that Stites combined money for the woman's care with his own business accounts, and did pay many of her expenses.

It was in 2013 when Stites sought advice from an attorney with the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation on how to get the woman on Medicaid, after an initial denial, that his mishandling of her money came to the attention of authorities.

That attorney, Valerie McWilliams, testified she thought that it was "extremely odd" given Stites' background as a professional bookkeeper and tax preparer that he would admit to commingling the woman's funds with his own.

She also felt, given what Stites had told her about the woman's assets and income, that she should have enough money to pay for her own care.

Ladd said she wanted the appellate court to know that she felt Stites had stolen far more from the woman but could not order a higher restitution figure because of the incompleteness of the evidence and the records that were before her.

After Stites' plea, Ladd heard evidence in aggravation and mitigation over two days as the attorneys attempted to come to a restitution figure.

Fletcher urged the judge to impose restitution of almost $315,000 while Weaver declined to offer an estimate, saying "somebody smarter than me will have to do that."

"I simply have no reasonable basis factually to determine what that is," Ladd said of the real loss.

Fletcher argued that Stites was in a "position of trust" and "routinely exploited that trust for years on end."

He told the judge he was not naive enough to think that Stites could or would repay the woman's estate the $315,000. He urged the judge to impose the eight-year sentence he agreed to at the time of Stites' plea. The most Stites could have received was 15 years in prison.

Weaver acknowledged Stites had "abused a fiduciary relationship" but reminded the judge of how Stites and his wife were at the beck and call of the woman for years and took on her care because she had no heirs.

He painted a picture of his client as someone in over his head who still didn't own his pickup truck or his own home, even after helping himself to the woman's money.

"I regret all that's happened. I don't understand a lot of it," Stites told Ladd, maintaining there was never any criminal intent on his part.

Ladd said Stites was minimizing his role and said as a business man educated in bookkeeping and tax preparation, that at the very least he knew not to combine the woman's assets with his own.

"In November 2011, he wrote three checks (from her account) for $155,000 and put it in his own work account. For him to commingle, shows he is up to no good," said Ladd. "I believe he took a large amount from her estate but I don't know how much."

Noting Stites' prior theft conviction for stealing from his employer in 2001 — that sentence included $88,000 in restitution — Ladd said he "didn't get the message the first time."

Stites was given credit on his sentence for 45 days already served. He is eligible for day-for-day good time in prison.

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Champaign man who swindled elderly woman in his care gets 7 years