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Home Health Aide Stole $52,000 From Elderly Couple, Detectives Say

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By TODD RUGER of the Sarasota Herald Tribune

Published: January 14, 2008

SARASOTA - A home health aide wrote herself $52,689 in checks last year out of an elderly couple's bank account, the Saraosta Sheriff's Office said.

Heather Velazco

The wife had pain in her hands and her husband has advanced Parkinson's disease and dimentia, so she asked Heather G. Velazco, 28, to fill out checks to pay monthly bills.

Velazco instead wrote out thirteen checks to herself for up to $5,500, about one a month since February, falsely noting in the check register that the checks were void or documenting them as $68 payments to the Dish Network, the sheriff's office said.

The couple's financial advisor called a daughter to ask why they had gone through $20,000 in one month, and the daughter then found the checks to Velazco that were not written in her mother's handwriting.

The daughter, whose name was redacted from sheriff's records, had arranged for Velazco's paychecks to go through a payroll service so there was no need for her parents to write a check to her, the sheriff's office said.

Velazco was arrested Sunday at home on a charge of exploitation of the elderly, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The certified nursing assistant remained in the Sarasota County Jail on $25,000 bond Monday night.

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