Two women have now been charged in Lewis County Superior Court with stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a 78-year-old Centralia woman they were paid to care for, according to court documents.
Edith L. Ivey, 54, of Oakville was charged Thursday afternoon with one count of first degree theft with aggravating factors accusing her of abusing a “particularly vulnerable” victim and committing a “major economic offense.”
Ivey made her first appearance in Lewis County Superior Court Thursday in custody but was later released on $10,000 unsecured bail.
Ivey is the second caregiver charged with first-degree theft for stealing from the 78-year-old woman requiring full-time care.
In February, Rachel Jeffrey, 37, of Chehalis was charged with first-degree theft in the case. A guilty-plea hearing in her case is scheduled for May 4.
According to court documents, the Centralia Police Department first began investigating the thefts on Dec. 23, 2017. A woman reported she believed her 78-year-old grandmother’s caregivers were stealing money from her by having the woman write checks to cash, or for more hours than the caregivers worked.
The granddaughter found her grandmother paid $146,713 to four caregivers for services in 2017, an estimated $63,000 more than she owed.
The family reportedly learned of the alleged thefts in December 2017 when the woman began receiving notices from her bank of bounced checks and insufficient funds.
The granddaughter reported the victim was “trusting her caregivers to be honest to write in their own pay per hour that they worked.”
The woman had four caregivers work for her in 2017, including Jeffery and Ivey. They were reportedly writing checks on the woman’s account.
Police investigated and found that Jeffery started with a wage of $2,750 per month in pay and worked up in about six months to $12,330 per month.
Ivey’s pay spiked to more than $6,510 in October 2017.
The caregivers were paid with checks pre-signed by the victim. The victim’s granddaughter reported the caregivers were charging the woman for the same sets of hours, despite them not working at the same time. She was also occasionally charged for more nights of work than there were in a given month. In one month she was charged for 57 overnight stays when only one caregiver ever worked at a time.
