Miami funeral home employee charged with swindling elderly man out of his home

Three years ago, Miami funeral home employee Maribel Torres befriended an elderly man with dementia whose wife had just died. Within a few months, authorities say, she’d convinced him to sign over his longtime house and even give her power of attorney and access to all of his finances.

The result, according to authorities: Over the years, Torres used the house to take out a mortgage for $100,000 and a business loan for $360,000 — money that flowed into bank accounts she controlled.

Miami-Dade police on Tuesday arrested Torres, 57, on charges of elderly exploitation, first-degree grand theft and organized scheme to defraud. She posted bond early Wednesday and left jail.

The 84-year-old victim — whose home had been mortgage free — had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and advance dementia. “Utilizing a wife’s death and an obvious impairment as tools to steal an elderly man’s home would seem to be a new low in alleged criminal conduct,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a press release on Wednesday.

Torres was an employee at Maspons Funeral Home, which handled the funeral arrangements for the man’s wife — who had been his primary caregiver. According to the press release, Torres “discovered” that they were somehow related, “creating a perceived sense of trust.”

Soon, she and her son convinced him that to sign quit-claim deeds ceding ownership of the house, even moving in with him. The ruse was not discovered until the elderly man’s nephew visited him from Palm Beach County, and the victim told him Torres and her son were relatives from Cuba.

“The nephew notified the authorities,” the release said. “Torres and her son are not related to the victim and his family.”

It was not immediately clear if she had retained an attorney.