(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Yale woman has been charged with exploiting an elderly relative by using her checks and opening credit accounts without her consent, as well as impersonating her in a credit application to a Stillwater store.
An arrest warrant was issued Friday for Kaelene Elsberry, 21, who was not in the Payne County Jail this morning, a sheriff’s spokesman told KUSH today.
If convicted of exploitation of an elderly person and creating a liability by false personation, Elsberry could be sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison, according to the two-count felony charge filed by Payne County First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Etherington last week.
Yale Police Officer Ken Moore wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit filed Friday that on Sept. 24, 2014, a woman came to the police station to report that a young relative had been stealing from her.
The woman had a bank statement indicating that five checks totaling $91.41 were signed by someone other than herself between July 22 and Aug. 11 of 2014, the affidavit alleged.
The woman’s debit card was used at Itunes for a total of $17.39 between Aug. 21 and Sept. 8 of 2014, the affidavit alleged.
Credit cards for the Buckle and Victoria’s Secret were applied for and received in the name of Elsberry’s relative, the affidavit alleged.
The Buckle credit card was used at the Stillwater store on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8 of 2014, for a total of $293.50, the affidavit alleged. The Victoria’s Secret credit card had not been used at the time of the investigation, the affidavit said.
The woman told the officer “she has never authorized anyone to forge her checks or use her Stage account” or applied for a Buckle credit card, the affidavit alleged.
The Yale officer alleged in his affidavit that he went to the defendant’s residence “to let her know I knew that she had been stealing,” from her elderly relative.
“I also told her I don’t need anything from you at this point – I have everything I need to prosecute her and I am not here to ask her any questions,” the Yale officer wrote in his affidavit.
The defendant “told me she had opened a Buckle credit card, as well as one for Victoria’s Secret,” the Yale officer alleged in his affidavit.
She “also told me she had used the Buckle card twice, but she had never used the Victoria’s Secret credit card,” the Yale officer alleged in his affidavit.
“Kaelene Elsberry told me she had used her (relative’s) debit card on a few occasions to get cash and buy her things. Kaelene Elsberry told me she had forged four of her (relative’s) checks,” the Yale officer alleged in his affidavit.
The Yale officer told the defendant not to speak to her relative about the case, “and if I find out she has tried to sway her (relative) in this case, I will file charges on her for that also,” the affidavit said.
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