Financial advisor helps uncover caretakers’ ripoff of woman, Miami-Dade investigators say
.jpg "Two Miami-Dade County caretakers were arrested Thursday, April 14, 2022, on charges they exploited and stole from a woman suffering from dementia.")
Miami-Dade police arrested two caretakers on charges they neglected a woman with dementia and stole well over $100,000 from her.
The alleged abuse, theft and fraud scheme was initially exposed in August by the woman’s financial advisor who became suspicious when his client called him on the phone and asked him to withdraw $40,000 from her account. He said he could hear a woman in the background giving her instructions, according to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
After receiving a call from the financial advisor, a relative from North Carolina came to Miami to check on her. The woman was found alone in her home covered in feces and urine.
“Only water in multiple jugs and a bottle of unknown fluid accessible via a straw were found in the house,” the State Attorney’s Office said in a statement issued on Friday.
After a months-long investigation, Miami-Dade police arrested caretakers, Evelyn Dinora Lopez De Ramirez De Hernandez, 45, and Yuri Hernandez, also 45, on Thursday. The State Attorney’s Office said De Hernandez has been charged with exploitation of the elderly/disabled over $100,000, theft from the elderly over $50,000 and organized fraud over $50,000 — all first-degree felonies.
As of Friday, De Hernandez was being held in Miami-Dade County jail on a bond of $30,000.
Hernandez is charged with theft from the elderly over $50,000, organized fraud over $50,000 and conspiracy to commit fraud over $50,000. He’s in jail on a $12,500 bond.
“This poor woman needed care and assistance, which is why she hired De Ramirez De Hernandez,” Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. “But, what she allegedly received was an apathetic concern about her daily physical needs and a greedy hand rummaging through her finances intended to provide for her care. These issues are what make crimes against our disabled and our elderly residents so troubling.”
The 69-year-old woman, who lived near Westchester but the State Attorney’s Office has not named, is also legally blind.
When the financial advisor received the phone call, he told the woman that she needed to come to his office in order to withdraw the money. The woman and De Hernandez came in the next day, the State Attorney’s Office said. The advisor told De Hernandez that she would have to wait outside his office.
While alone with the woman, she told the advisor that she did not need the money.
De Hernandez then returned alone three days later with a document claiming she had power of attorney over the woman’s finances, the State Attorney’s Office said. The financial advisor questioned the validity of the document and told De Ramirez that the woman would have to be with her before he would hand over the money.
When De Hernandez left, the financial advisor called the woman’s relatives in North Carolina.
According to De Hernandez’s arrest report, she stole money from the woman using an ATM card and by writing checks out to cash from the woman’s bank account.
State Attorney’s Office spokesman Ed Griffith said Yuri Hernandez used his bank account to help facilitate De Hernandez’s theft from the woman.
“The money moved into an account only handled by him from her, and from her, it’s stolen from the victim,” Griffith said.
This story was originally published April 15, 2022 at 10:27 AM.
