Caregiver Preyed On Elderly Man To Get Fortune: Police

ENID, OK — A case unfolding in Oklahoma is calling attention to the vulnerability of elderly, infirm adults who rely on others to manage their affairs. Police say 36-year-old Shelly Annette Streck, a home-health worker, appeared to be “grooming” an 85-year-old man whose bedridden wife she was caring for to bilk him out of nearly everything he owned.

Streck, who is now charged with two felony counts of abuse by a caretaker, preyed on the man, who is “very lonely” and “looking for attention anywhere he can get it,” according to court documents. Each of the charges is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Streck’s efforts to win favor with the man included showing him a provocative video of herself doing a striptease and dressing scantily when she was in the couple’s home, according to reports. Police said Streck was paid cash to provide around-the-clock care for the 82-year-old woman, who suffered a stroke in 2012 and was unable to speak.

During the time Streck was caring for the man’s wife, he added her name to his bank account, listed her as co-owner of a car he bought and signed over several family heirlooms to her, according to court documents cited by television station KOCO.

He even tried to disinherit his daughters and remove their names from his will, a change his attorney refused to make, the station said.

Police became involved after the Oklahoma Adult Protective Services got a tip from a worker at Health Back Home Care, which is providing care for the woman under a doctor's referral, about concerns that Streck was taking advantage of the elderly man.

According to an affidavit cited by the Enid News, the man told the worker that he was “changing things to leave everything to Shelly” and, in the event of his death, wanted her to move into the house with her children and continue caring for his wife. The worker said Streck’s arrangement with the man “is not a normal caregiver/client relationship,” according to the affidavit.

State adult-protection workers interviewed Streck, who said that she didn’t attempt to deter the man from leaving her family heirlooms or “keep her name off anything,” but neither was it her idea, according to the affidavit.

“It would appear that Streck has been grooming [the man] to take over property and finances for her own gain,” the worker wrote.

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