The stripper moved in with the 79-year-old. Then, she stripped him of $51,000, cops say
A New Smyrna Beach stripper has been charged with stealing $51,400 from the bank accounts of a 79-year-old she’d moved in with for a few months.
Chalesey O’Brien remains in Volusia County Jail on $100,000 bond, charged with grand theft of a victim over 65 over $50,000 and criminal use of personal identification information of person over 60.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement says O’Brien met the near-octogenarian at Bottoms Up Club and told on herself during a phone call to her incarcerated boyfriend, Cullen March.
“I robbed him, like, I paid some of my child support off, I went to Victoria Secret, I pulled out a whole bunch of cash,” the arrest affidavit says O’Brien told March on Dec. 13, 2018. “I got Christmas for everybody. ... I was pulling money out left and right.”
The affidavit says O’Brien was pulling off her clothes at Bottoms Up under the stage name “Kylie” in 2018 when she met Don Smith, a 79-year-old who had moved to Port Orange the year before, after the death of his wife. O’Brien told FDLE Special Agent Lisa Gundrum she moved in with O’Brien shortly after meeting him and lived with him for three or four months.
Smith knew O’Brien needed a place to live. It’s not clear if Smith knew O’Brien had 10 previous arrests in Volusia County alone, along with convictions for grand theft and possession of a controlled substance and a boyfriend doing time for burglary and grand theft auto.
“Smith said O’Brien did a ‘lot of stuff’ for him, kept his house ‘together’ and took him to appointments,” Gundrum wrote in the affidavit. “Smith did not pay O’Brien for her assistance but helped O’Brien with money like giving her money for gas to take her child to school. .... O’Brien had a drug addiction. On one occasion, Smith gave O’Brien money for drugs, however, Smith purchased the drugs directly.
That’s what Smith’s nephew in Orlando said he did for Smith every Wednesday. In November 2018, Smith’s nephew was with him when his debit card got rejected for a purchase. The men went to PNC Bank “and discovered thousands of dollars had been withdrawn from Smith’s account via Groupon purchases.”
PNC told Smith $13,000 had been moved from his savings account to his checking account by phone. Smith’s relatives knew that’s not the pattern of his transfers when banking by phone. Also, he didn’t bank or buy things online.
Upon further review, the affidavit says, Smith saw O’Brien transferred money from his money market account to his checking account, then made cash withdrawals and online buys. She did this when she’d drive Smith to the ATM and, when he asked her to withdraw money for him, took a few hundred extra for herself.
The final count of O’Brien’s thievery from September 2018 through May 2019, according to FDLE’s Gundrum: $3,918.18 on Walmart.com; $4,513.63 at HomeDepot.com; $4,520.13 on Groupon; and $38,448.80 via ATM withdrawals.
