April 15, 2007

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  NEWS: Caregiver Exploited Elderly Woman

   

  Pamela Ramer, 36, narrowly avoided prison late last week after admitting to being guilty of taking several debit cards and a quantity of money from accounts belonging to a pair of elderly women she cared for in the town of Sugar Grove. Ramer, of Montgomery, pleaded guilty to one count of financial exploitation of an elderly person in a Saint Charles circuit court.
  
  Per Ramer's plea bargain, she was sentenced to two years' probation. Additionally, Ramer was ordered by a Saint Charles circuit judge to pay just under $11,000 in restitution to two of her victims, elderly women in their eighties for whom Ramer worked as a caregiver. Ramer was self-employed at the time of the incidents, police said, although she was formerly employed by an Aurora home health care company. Ramer was facing up to five years in prison on account of the charges against her when Circuit Judge Grant Wegner accepted the plea deal.
  
  Brian Mirandola, an assistant state attorney, stated that Ramer was caught in the process of a police investigation after one of her victims noticed fund missing from her bank account. Mirandola stated that Ramer took the debit cards from the victims' homes and made multiple ATM withdrawals in $100 or $200 denominations. One victim lost just under $800, but another lost over $10,000. Mirandola stated that Ramer had previously pleaded guilty to a similar crime in Kendall County, Illinois, where she also received probation. He added that so far, only the two victims had come forward, but that there might be more.
  
  
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