A Florida woman gets three years in prison after scamming her grandmother out of $300,000 by fabricating false claims, including needing money to avoid jail for a child’s death
A woman in Florida has been sentenced to three years in prison after she allegedly scammed her own grandmother out of $300,000. The woman initially pleaded guilty to 12 counts of wire fraud in May, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of Illinois,
Court documents revealed that Tanya M. Aboseada, 39, had convinced her grandmother to wire her money under false pretenses on at least 12 occasions between November 2021 and August 2022.
Documents stated that Aboseada told her grandmother that she needed the cash for various things such as transferring the title of a truck into her own name, paying money she owed to the IRS and paying fees for an attorney for a car accident.
A Florida woman is being charged with scamming her grandmother out of over $300,000 for various reasons ( Image: Getty Images)
Aboseada also stated that needed the money in order to pay the family of a child she had allegedly killed in order to avoid going to jail. In total, Aboseada stole around $317,049. The special agent in charge of the case slammed the woman’s behavior toward her family member.
“The fraud perpetrated by Tanya Aboseada relied on the love and devotion of a family member, which is in many ways more heartless than when the perpetrator is a stranger,” Christopher Johnson, FBI Springfield Field Office Special Agent in Charge, said per the release. “The FBI upholds an unwavering commitment to deliver justice to victims of elder fraud, and to prioritize the pursuit of those who deliberately target vulnerable seniors.”
In addition to her imprisonment, Aboseada was ordered to pay all the money back and serve three years of supervised release. One U.S. attorney also released a statement regarding the case.
The woman is currently facing three years in prison ( Image: Getty Images)
“Seniors are warned to avoid giving money to strangers who may be looking to take advantage of them, but it’s a different kind of deceit when criminals target their own elderly family members,” said U.S. Attorney Rachelle Aud Crowe in the release. “I appreciate our partnership with the FBI to bring justice for the grandmother, who was simply wanting to help her grandchild she thought was in need.”
News of the woman’s sentence comes after another Florida woman, who was on her was on her way to her husband’s funeral was denied entry to the plane because she had been issued a fraudulent ticket. 79-year-old Joanne Stainer said that she was unable to join her family in Wisconsin for her late husband’s funeral after she accidentally got involved in an elaborate scheme.
Talking with Central Florida station WFTV, Stainer said that the plan was to join her son and grandson at the Orlando airport International Airport on June 1, but she was prevented from doing so due to a medical emergency. Forced to book her own travel, Stainer called 411 and was put in contact with a representative at Allegiant Air who assisted her in booking a new flight.
In addition to her sentence, the woman is being ordered to pay back all the money and will be supervised upon her release ( Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
However, the so-called “representative” was actually a scammer who offered her a fake round-trip ticket for $998 the day before her husband’s funeral. After giving the scammer her card information, it was continually charged until nearly $2,000 had been taken from her accounts. The seemingly legit boarding pass allowed her to get all the way up to the gate until it was flagged by the staff at the gate.
According to Stainer, her checked bags managed to make it all the way to Appleton, Wisconsin, but she didn’t. She was forced to miss her husband’s funeral. “I was so intent on, ‘I’m going to be there to watch him be put in the ground.’ I owe him that,” Joanne said.
A spokesperson for Allegiant Airlines told the outlet that normally the ticket would have been flagged immediately but since it was purchased so close to the departure time, the system didn’t flag it. According to the airline, passengers should deal directly with the airline rather than dealing with third-party apps.
