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Elderly couple's life savings stolen by 25-yo secretary

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  • ml1209

    Active Member
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    4   0   0
    Jan 14, 2009
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    What a shame. This couple owned a construction business and saved all their lives to retire. They hired a young woman to be their secretary, treated her like family, and it turns out she embezzled $367,000 from the business. The money is gone. Now the couple cannot retire.
    Link to video:
    Couple Loses Everything In Theft - Video - KPRC Houston
    Cleveland police officer under investigation > Eastex Advocate > News Archives > Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town

    Cleveland police officer under investigation
    The owner of a Cut and Shoot construction business and his wife, both 81, will have to work “until we die” after a former employee stole $367,000 from the company, the owner said.
    The employee’s husband, an officer with the Cleveland Police Department in Liberty County, also is under investigation for crimes related to his wife’s embezzlement, an official said.
    Loretta Blankenship, 25, of Conroe, pleaded guilty Nov. 24 to first-degree felony aggregate theft in the 9th State District Court of Judge Fred Edwards, according to court records. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to make full restitution to John and Ezetta Dueitt, owners of Cut and Shoot Inc.
    “With the money she stole from us and the money we paid her, it would take 21 years for her to pay it back,” John Dueitt said. “It took all our savings that we’d saved for 60 years.
    “It almost put me out of business.”

    Dueitt hired Blankenship in March 2006 to perform secretarial duties and cut checks to his company’s suppliers, he said. While he and his wife were supposed to sign each check, Blankenship learned how to forge Ezetta Dueitt’s signature.
    “She forged my wife’s name on the checks,” John Dueitt said, “then put them in her bank account. She had intercepted all the mail and phone calls.”
    Dueitt started noticing how difficult it was becoming to pay bills, but he attributed that to the rising cost of diesel fuel and the economy in general, he said.
    One day in June 2008, Blankenship went to lunch at noon, as she did every day at work, Dueitt said. The phone rang, and his wife picked up the phone.
    “It was my banker,” he said. “He was calling me to let me know we were way overdrawn.”
    The Dueitts soon fired Blankenship, and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office started building its case against her. She was arrested and released soon after on a $1,000 bond, Dueitt said.
    Loretta Blankenship was due to plead guilty Sept. 11 but abruptly withdrew her plea. After new allegations from another employer came to light, however, Edwards revoked her bond Oct. 29 and remanded her back to jail.
    According to court records, Blankenship’s employer at the time found nearly $1,000 in charges in July made on two different credit cards, which the employer didn’t make. The employer also told Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputies that a number of baseball cards were missing from a locked storage area.
    Cleveland Police Officer Bluford Blankenship, Loretta’s husband, is now under investigation by both the Cleveland and Conroe police departments for first-degree felony theft related to his possible involvement in his wife’s crimes, Cleveland Police Chief Mark Bradshaw said.
    Conroe police informed the Cleveland PD Dec. 3 of its investigation.
    “Once we received that information, Officer Blankenship was suspended with pay pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation,” Bradshaw said Friday.
    The Cleveland PD will conduct a “parallel investigation” with the Conroe Police Department since the crime occurred within the Conroe PD’s jurisdiction, Bradshaw said.
    Bluford Blankenship was placed on administrative leave instead of being suspended without pay, Bradshaw said, due to the Loudermill Act of 1985, which provides that most public employees are to be given a hearing before they are discharged. During that hearing, the employee is entitled to oral or written notice of the charges and is given the opportunity to present his or her side of the story.
    Blankenship has been a patrol officer with the Cleveland Police Department since 2007.
    George Renneburg, Loretta Blankenship’s attorney, said he didn’t know whether his client would be able to pay back any of the money she took from the Dueitts.
    “Restitution will be pretty damned tough in the pen,” he said.
    He believes Loretta Blankenship will be eligible for parole in about four years, depending on her conduct in prison.
    “I expect Loretta to be a decent inmate,” he said. “I thought she was a very likable person. I was disappointed to see her in that situation.”
    The Dueitts had “trusted her from one end to the other,” John Dueitt said.
    “We were planning on retiring this year,” he said. “Now, it looks like we’ll be working until we die.”
    Military Camp
     

    DirtyD

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    Sep 20, 2008
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    Spring
    And dont even bother investigating the husband... GUILTY! I have a hard time believing he didnt know and wasnt complicant in what was going on with that much money....
     

    Shorts

    TGT Addict
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    Mar 28, 2008
    4,607
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    Texas
    :(

    This makes me so sad. There's no punishment strong enough to make up for the struggle these folks went through and will go through to live. When I hear about elderly being targeted I think of my grandparents and how if it were them...
     

    ml1209

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    Jan 14, 2009
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    The couple may have been lonely and childless, and saw the woman as the daughter they never had. Also, the fact her husband is a police officer also contributed to them letting their guard down.
     

    DCortez

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    Jan 28, 2009
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    Houston, Cy-Fair
    Is a shame. Hope the husband and wife team get what they have coming to them.

    Unfortunately, the elderly couple learned a hard lesson. Keep control of your checks, check your balances daily, require two signatures if you can't keep an eagle eye on things, and ask yourself why aren't you keeping an eagle eye on things.

    I know I'd be sick...
     

    hkusp1

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    Mar 25, 2009
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    DALLAS, TX
    Same crap happened to my dad but that hoebag And her husband got away with it. I heard a few years later she blew her house up trying to cook meth.
     

    SC-Texas

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    Feb 7, 2009
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    Houston, TX
    I hate to say this, but why are we convicting the husband without any proof?

    Hell, how many of you know what your wife or girlfriend is really doing?

    Do you know how easy it is to hide money?

    That said, 2006 to 2009, 100k a hear should be somewhat noticable, but maybe she told him that she was being paid for running their business? If she was such a good con, why do you think she wasn't conning the husband?

    ETA: i do beleive that she should be hanging from an Oak tree as a warning to any others
     

    thorkyl

    Active Member
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    0   0   0
    Oct 13, 2008
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    Brazoria County
    Draw and quarter her

    The article did not state if the account she was putting the money in was a joint account.

    As far as we know it could have been her own personal "mad money" account.
     

    bartender_gal09

    New Member
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    0   0   0
    Apr 16, 2010
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    1
    Shreveport, La
    I Know The Husband !

    I know it was a long time ago, but I dated the husband for a year while in high school. Its funny because when I found them on myspace, I tried to be friends with them and she had the nerve to call me a "home wrecker" while all I was really intending was to be friends with both of them. I was married at the time and was not in the least bit interested in him in that way. She seemed so put together and straight laced. Another classmate found the video on the internet and called me about. We were in disbelief. Bluford Blankenship's father was a Chief of Police for Trinity, Texas for many, many years. They moved in 1997 from Trinity to Conroe. Both of Bluford's parents were the most loving, christian people and I can't help but think his dad would roll over in his grave if he could know what was going on now. Just crazy. Loretta, or Layne as she is referred to on her Facebook, should be taken out and shot like a sick animal for what she did to that couple. The weird thing is, there is no trace of where the money went. How can you spend that much (of someone else's) money and not have a damn thing to show for it. What a bitch!

    bartender_gal
     

    willygene

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    Oct 3, 2009
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    texas
    there is now way the husband didnt know she took 367,000 dollars over a 4 year period we had the same thing happen here were im from, anybody that thinks he didnt know hasnt lived on a law enforcement officers salery, or they are just independantly welthy and wouldnt know they had an extra 300,000 or so to spend in the last 4 years, give me a break he knew.
     
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