Caretaker allegedly steals nearly $100,000 from 98 year old woman

A family told ABC-7 their elderly aunt was defrauded of nearly $100,000.

Family members say it was an El Paso caretaker who took advantage of the woman’s failing health.

Now the caretaker is under investigation.

Lillian Childress, who the family calls Aunt Lil, is 98 years old.

“She has been the matriarch of our family for a very long time,” said Holly Lind.

Lind is Aunt Lil’s great-niece.

“She loves crossword puzzles, she’s a big fan of staying up late and watching television,” Lind said.

Aunt Lil also has a sense of humor, Lind showed ABC-7 pictures of Aunt Lil where she captioned herself

as being hung over, jokingly. But after several health issues, the family knew Aunt Lil would need some help.

“We did research and had a caretaker come in for about a year. She (Aunt Lil) then unfortunately had a fall and broke her hip,” Lind said.

Lind said throughout the year Aunt Lil had befriended her caretaker, and as she treaded through physical therapy her family found some disheartening news.

“We discovered that the caretaker had stolen over $100,000 of Lillian’s and it was her life savings that was essentially depleted through three different credit cards,” Lind said.

So how does this happen? Well in her younger days Aunt Lil worked at the Federal Reserve Bank and knew the importance of keeping all her documents in order.

“So she insisted on writing everything down so she could remember passwords, bank account numbers etc. and it was through that, that this individual had access to everything that she needed in order to portray herself as Lillian,” Lind said.

Lind told ABC-7 the caretaker got funds from Aunt Lil’s savings account to pay for credit cards, adding the caretaker also changed all the accounts to her own address so no one saw receipts or bank statements.

Lind said everything was reported to the company the caretaker worked for, Adult Protective Services and the police but the reason the family came to ABC-7:

“It may be that this individual is not arrested and could get probation because she has no prior record which means that she could essentially do it again,” Lind said.

ABC-7 does know the name of the woman accused of the fraud but she has not been charged yet.

ABC-7 spoke with police and they said the investigation is ongoing.

Once the investigation is complete and charges are filed ABC-7 will provide an update.