An Anaheim woman pleaded guilty Thursday to taking more than $215,000 from her 94-year-old grandfather’s bank account over a 14-month period.
Michele Marie Bilbao, 50, admitted 15 felony counts of theft from an elder adult and sentencing enhancement allegations for aggravated white-collar crime exceeding $100,000.
Bilbao is scheduled to be sentenced July 26 at the North Justice Center in Fullerton.
The defendant can avoid prison and be put on five years of formal probation if she can repay her grandfather, according to Senor Deputy District Attorney Marc Labreche, who said she intends to sell her home.
If she cannot pay any restitution to the victim, she will be sentenced to four years in prison, the prosecutor said, adding that she would face 20 years behind bars if she fails to show up for sentencing.
After Bilbao’s grandmother died in April 2012, she began helping her grandfather, Frank Centeno, pay his bills, according to a declaration prepared by an Orange County sheriff’s investigator in connection with a request to increase the defendant’s bail.
In the beginning, she would sit down with her grandfather, sort through the bills and provide him paper statements because he does not use a computer, the investigator said. But in early 2017, she started handling his credit union account electronically and stopped providing him with paper statements, which left Centeno unable to “monitor his money anymore,” the investigator wrote.
In June of that year, when the victim’s son visited from Iowa, he took Centeno to the bank, where they discovered his accounts had been “severely depleted,” according to the investigator.
The victim’s credit union account had $237,868.77 in it as of May 2017, but by July 31 of that year, it was down to $21,084.90, the investigator said.
The victim’s son called a family meeting and Bilbao agreed to pay back the money, saying she “borrowed” it from her grandfather to help a friend she met online who said he was “sick” and needed help with medical expenses, the investigator said.