Crime & Safety

Home Health Aide Charged with Stealing $26K

A home health-care aide working for a Darien family since September was accused of stealing from her client, a woman in her 80s, with fraudulent credit card charges and checks.

A woman working as a home health-care aide for a Darien woman in her 80s was making fraudulent credit card charges and improperly withdrawing funds from her client's checking account, police say.

Darien Police Capt. Frederick W. Komm, commander of the investigative services unit and a spokesman for the department, gave this account:

Farrah Baker, 24, of Norwalk, had been working for the elderly Darien woman since September. The woman's son later discovered numerous inconsistencies in his mother's credit card statements and a number of suspicious checks written to Baker and purportedly signed by his mother.

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Police examined the financial records and determined that from September 1022 through January 2012, Baker had made $8,768 in fraudulent credit card charges and $17,850 in improper withdrawals from the woman's bank account—a total of $26,618 in losses.

Baker, of 28 Perry St., Norwalk, admitted to police that she had been involved in the fraudulent activity. She was charghed with first-degree larceny, 42 counts of illegal use of a credit card, 42 counts of receipt of money, goods or services by illegal credit card use, and 32 counts of third-degree forgery.

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She surrendered herself at headquarters on Wednesday after she was told an arrest warrant had been issued, and she was released on a written promise to appear April 2 in state Superior Court in Stamford.


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