Woman Faces Charges after Draining Elderly Husband's Money
A 45-year-old woman faces 17 felony charges of grand theft and elder abuse after she was accused of and arrested for draining her husband’s bank accounts. According to The Press-Enterprise website, 45-year-old Shawna Verdugo stole $500,000 from her husband, 74-year-old Johannes Holzel. Verdugo also reportedly took out a fraudulent life insurance policy on her husband as well.
Holzel died in the summer of 2010, according to the report. Holzel and Verdugo married in June of 2008 and while Holzel was in the hospital in 2009 after suffering gangrene in his leg after an accident, Verdugo reportedly stole a total of $13,000 from her husband’s bank accounts and took out a life insurance policy totaling $300,000.
In addition, she sold Holzel’s car and used the money to purchase her own car and changed the passwords to his accounts. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for April to determine if the prosecution has enough evidence to support a trial. The defense attorney argued that since Holzel died last summer, there is no sufficient evidence to support the prosecution’s claims that Verdugo stole the money from her husband. Without her husband’s word to back up the claims, they do not have a case.
Greed is often a very strong motivator for most people to steal from someone they supposedly love and care for. In some cases, relationships are developed specifically because one of the people involved has a lot of money that the other person can have access to. As a result of greed, people can commit vicious crimes such as financial elder abuse as in this incident. This woman went as far as to take out a life insurance policy to keep herself insured and continue to receive money after his death. People should be held responsible for their actions in incidents like this one when greed pushes them to commit horrible crimes against an elderly person
