Prosecutors come to the defense of seniors

Desiree Boltos spent the past several years forming relationships with people expressly to steal from them.

Lori Varnell has spent the past few years building relationships to make sure people like Boltos pay dearly for their crimes.

Mission accomplished: Because of Varnell’s outreach as Tarrant County assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s Elder Financial Fraud Unit, Boltos — the 37-year-old “Sweetheart Swindler” who bilked at least eight area victims out of more than $1.6 million — is headed for an utterly stunning 85-year prison term.

It appears to be an unprecedented sentence for a white collar criminal in Tarrant County history, and should emit shock waves throughout the country and perhaps beyond — as well as send the message that older folks are no longer defenseless against scammers.

“I certainly hope so,” Varnell says. “That was certainly the goal of it. We want to reach everybody with this message.”

The early signs are good: The Tarrant County jury’s resolute sentence Nov. 30 has been picked up by the international press, noticed by financial institutions in New York and quite likely will send quakes through prosecutorial and law enforcement circles and tremors through the back alleys where shady swindlers slink and skulk.

More importantly, the case should signal to seniors and those who love them that there is no shame in being the victim of someone else’s despicable deeds. The unnecessary self-flagellation and embarrassment that victims of sophisticated scams tend to heap on themselves can even compound the crimes against them — through not only self-reproach but also the isolating suspicion that their children will take control of their affairs if they find out about the fleecing.

Seniors and their families need to talk more, not less, about the growing finesse and fierceness of 21st-century swindles, including fraudulent home repairs, phony sweepstakes, fake jury summonses and, yes, “sweetheart” scams.

All of theses con games, notes District Attorney Sharen Wilson, ruthlessly prey upon older citizens’ trusting nature and their desires to be in good standing with the government and to help those in need. But the “love con” is particularly hurtful, as it can leave victims both bankrupt and brokenhearted. “It’s emotionally devastating, it’s financially devastating,” Varnell says.

If society has historically had little sympathy for older men duped by unscrupulous younger women, society needs a paradigm shift. Whether one’s vault is broken into through a window or a heart, the theft is the same. When one of Boltos’ victims described losing his life savings to her, and being subsequently unable to help his son in Houston recover from Hurricane Harvey, it brought some jurors to tears.

“They are very much a vulnerable group of individuals,” says Varnell, adding her admiration for the many investigators, analysts and attorneys who “worked their hearts out” at all hours to put Boltos away for a good, long lifetime.

Boltos — who Varnell reports has multiple aliases and has left footprints from California to Florida as well as the fingerprints of an itinerant scam artist — claimed at trial that she never learned how to read. But she sure knew how to read people, Varnell says.

It’s incumbent on seniors not to be an open book — and for society to help them.