A Tennessee couple is found to have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank account of an elderly woman in her late 80s.
60-year-old Lee Anne Harris and her 41-year-old husband, Henry Harris, are the alleged perpetrators who stole nearly $419,000 from an 88-year-old woman they were supposed to take care of legally.
The woman trusted Lee Anne Harris to pay her bills using her bank cards and take care of all her financial matters.
According to the victim’s son, Lee Anne Harris took power of attorney for his mother back in 2019 and was entrusted with paying her bills. However, she saw it as an opportunity to defraud the very woman who had handed over her bank accounts, which contained thousands of dollars.
The son stated that the couple kept on stealing the money for nearly one and a half years, from April 2021 to December 2022, without his mother’s permission.
Over the years, the son did not realize the fraud as he never dug deep into her mother’s finances. However, police maintained that the son only learned about the theft when he looked into her mother’s bank accounts and shockingly realized that she spent almost $675,000 in two years.
The couple has now been arrested and faces multiple charges like identity theft, financially exploiting an elderly citizen, and forgery of more than $250,000. Investigations revealed that the couple withdrew more than $93,000 from ATMs using the victim’s debit card and cashed in over $84,000 of checks they wrote in her name.
The son argued that the pair also spent more than $240,000 on various online platforms like Amazon, Home Depot, and Uber Eats.
Reportedly, Lee Anne Harris was supposed to pay the woman’s bill without receiving any monthly pay. According to the son, he or his mother did not sign any agreement to pay the couple any money as a salary for assisting her.
Lee Anne and Henry Harris are set to appear in court on August 15 with their bails set at $50,000.
