Rossen Reports: Thieves target seniors at nursing homes

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Across the United States, nursing-home residents are having their money stolen by people they know: the homes’ bookkeepers and office managers who handle their trust funds and manage their expenses.

It’s a crime that’s been committed against thousands of nursing-home residents, including Leo Foster’s 89-year-old mother at the Vicksburg Convalescent Center in Vicksburg, Miss.

“It made me feel sick at my stomach,” Leo’s wife Phyllis Foster told TODAY’s National Investigative Correspondent Jeff Rossen. “It just didn’t dawn on me that someone would be so low as to steal from a vulnerable adult.”

Police learned that a woman named Lee Ray Martin, a business office coordinator at the Vicksburg Convalescent Center and Shady Lawn Health and Rehabilitation homes, had been raiding residents’ trust accounts.

“In (a) three-month period there were 12 or 15 cash withdrawals,” Phyllis Foster said of her mother-in-law’s account. “And we knew that there was something drastically wrong.”

In August, Martin pleaded guilty to 29 counts of exploitation of a vulnerable person and one count of conspiracy. She is accused of stealing more than $100,000 from 83 residents’ trust funds and going on shopping sprees at stores like J.C. Penney, Gap, Walmart and American Eagle. In one instance, Martin bought a pair of designer jeans and expensed them to an elderly resident with no legs.

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Rossen Reports: Thieves target seniors at nursing homes

Couple given probation for bilking elderly woman

VALPARAISO | Porter County Superior Court Judge Mary Harper accepted a plea agreement Wednesday for a Michigan City couple who pleaded guilty to stealing more than $100,000 from an elderly, blind Chesterton woman they were caring for.

The plea agreement imposes an eight-year prison sentence for both Bary and Robbin Bostic with the couple getting credit for the 252 days already served and the rest to be served on probation. They also must reimburse the victim and must take part in a program of intensive monitoring and classes.

Robbin, 40, and Bary, 48, pleaded guilty in June to stealing gold, silver and platinum coins and bars, jewelry and cash between January and April 2012. They reportedly have returned about three-fourths of the stolen assets.

Police said they were alerted to the theft March 16 after responding to a burglary complaint at the woman’s downtown area home. She was living in a Michigan City hotel because of a mold problem, which police later found to be minimal enough not to warrant moving out.

Police learned the Bostics rented a storage unit in their name with a check from the woman, and they took gold, silver and platinum coins and bars valued at more than $220,000 to sell to a jeweler. Robbin Bostic had a wedding ring set belonging to the victim but claimed it was a gift from the woman.

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Couple given probation for bilking elderly woman