Daniel Vaeth is seen in a 2013 mugshot provided by the Lewis County Sheriff's Office.
The Centralia man accused of gambling away his deceased girlfriend's Department of Labor and Industries benefits pleaded guilty to identity theft and will spend four months on electronic home monitoring.
Daniel R. Vaeth pleaded guilty to second-degree identity theft on Wednesday afternoon, which is a reduction from the charge of first-degree identity theft that prosecutors initially charged him with, Deputy Prosecutor Eric Eisenberg said.
The 58-year-old convicted sex offender admitted to investigators that he withdrew money from his girlfriend’s accounts after she died, according to court documents. The bank account he took money from was the one that her Labor and Industries payments had been deposited into.
His girlfriend died in 2010, and nearly a year passed before L&I realized it, court documents state. The department calculated that it paid more than $15,000 into the account in the year after her death. An investigator later learned that Vaeth had withdrawn more than $8,000 from the account. The majority of that amount was withdrawn at the Lucky Eagle Casino.
Eisenberg said he recommended Judge James Lawler sentence Vaeth to either four months in jail, or six months on electronic home monitoring. Lawler instead sentenced Vaeth to four months on electronic home monitoring.
Restitution to L&I will be determined at a later date, Eisenberg said, as he needs to figure out how much L&I was able to recover from the bank account.
