GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – A woman who took $232,000 from her elderly parents’ accounts at Lake Michigan CU and invested it in an Internet Nigerian scam was put on probation for five years and ordered to replenish the funds.
Mary Davis, 57, told a state judge she thought she was doing the right thing for her 86-year-old mother and 89-year-old father, whom she cares for. The money was wired from accounts at the credit union to overseas accounts.
The mother wrote to prosecutors in January asking them to drop the charges against her daughter. “She made a terrible mistake which I can’t understand and which she regrets,” Corinne Davis wrote. “I can forgive her and hopefully go on enjoying my loving family during my last days on this earth.”
The mom said her daughter is a big help to her parents and does their shopping, house work and tends the yard and pool.
The daughter originally was charged with two counts of embezzlement against each of her parents, but prosecutors agreed to not pursue one of the charges in exchange for her guilty plea to a single count.
