MIAMI – A Florida woman who drained an 87-yr-aged Holocaust survivor’s life savings by posing as a really like desire and then lived lavishly off the $2.8 million she received was sentenced Thursday to around 4 years in prison.
Peaches Stergo, 36, of Champions Gate, Florida, was explained by U.S. District Choose Edgardo Ramos as “unspeakably cruel” and inspired by greed as he declared the sentence in Manhattan federal courtroom.
Specified a likelihood to converse, Stergo mentioned: “I am sorry.” She pleaded guilty in April to wire fraud, admitting that she drained the life discounts of a gentleman she satisfied on a dating web page 7 many years ago.
Stergo commenced inquiring the after effective businessman for funds in Could 2017, proclaiming she essential revenue to fork out a law firm who was refusing to release the payout from a bogus harm settlement, prosecutors said. He paid her $25,000. Around the following four many years, she utilised lies to coax the person to create 62 checks totaling above $2.8 million right until he was broke, they additional.
She obtained him to ship as significantly as $50,000 at a time as she advised determined lies and faked letters from a bank employee to again up her statements, prosecutors said.
They said Stergo traveled to New York to take a look at the sufferer in his Manhattan apartment, falsely claiming she was a Florida nanny and her identify was “Alice” and failing to expose that she was in a extended-time period partnership with one more gentleman and experienced two little ones.
As the victim lost his existence discounts and was compelled to surrender his apartment, Stergo utilised his dollars to dwell a everyday living of luxurious, traveling on high priced visits to Europe and Las Vegas when she was not residing in her gated community or utilizing her boat and many automobiles, which includes a Corvette and a Suburban, prosecutors stated.
They said she invested almost all of the man’s dollars, which include countless numbers of dollars for expensive meals, gold cash and bars, jewelry, Rolex watches and designer clothes.
As part of her sentence, she faces a $2.8 restitution and forfeiture purchase.
“Peaches Stergo callously defrauded an 87-12 months-old Holocaust survivor who was just searching for companionship,” U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams stated in a statement. “But she did not get away with it. As today’s sentence demonstrates, perpetrators of romance ripoffs will be held to account for their crimes.”
Prosecutors mentioned Stergo had mocked her victim when she advised her true lover in a concept that the sufferer had explained he “beloved” her. They claimed she followed that message with “lol.” And they explained that when he ran out of funds, she certain him to offer his inventory of diamonds and borrow from other people.
Prosecutors did not establish the target, but they said he suffers from cognitive drop, among the other health and fitness concerns, and is frail.
In a letter to the decide, the target, who was 6 when he dropped equally of his moms and dads in the Holocaust and who moved to the United States in his early 20s, wrote: “As a Holocaust survivor, I have endured unspeakable agony and decline in my lifestyle, but in no way did I think about that I would be subjected to such a heartless betrayal in my aged age.”
Stergo’s law firm, Ann Marie Fitz, wrote in a sentencing submission that Stergo is a partner to her longtime boyfriend and mother to two teenage boys and that her boyfriend describes her as a terrific mom and a born-all over again Christian.
“She is not the cold-hearted human being the government and media have designed her out to be,” the attorney wrote. “There was a real, caring relationship that Ms. Stergo had with the target in this scenario — she put in holiday seasons with him, she took treatment of him when he was sick and, as the victim’s cousin described, she was ‘doting’ on him.”
