BOSTON — A 90-year-old woman from South Boston claims she was taken for everything she owned – even her house – in a case that has sparked a criminal investigation.
Lawyers for Frances Lepsevich are in family court fighting to get the elderly woman’s house returned to her and are claiming in a civil lawsuit that her former tenant and friend also drained her bank accounts.
Investigative reporter Eric Rasmussen learned just this week that the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has taken the case of 90-year-old Frances Lepsevich to a grand jury as her civil trial continues in family court.
The former tenant, Tracey Goodman, and her attorneys say she’s done nothing wrong.
Lepsevich lived in her two-family home on M Street with views of the water – now valued at nearly $1 million – for more than 60 years.
“Oh, it means everything to me,” Lepsevich told 25 Investigates in an interview. “My family was all gone. My relatives were gone, but I kept that house going!”
But when her declining health landed her in a nursing home, someone helping Lepsevich with her finances made a surprising discovery.
“He looked the papers over and he said, ‘Frances, you don't own that house anymore,’” said Lepsevich.
Lepsevich had signed away her home for $100 to her longtime tenant Tracey Goodman, who had rented the first floor of Lepsevich’s house for more than 10 years.
Lepsevich, who has no family left of her own, says she and Goodman became close before she signed over the deed to her house and made Goodman her power of attorney and health care proxy in 2009. Lepsevich even added Goodman’s name to her bank accounts.
Bank records show hundreds in charges on those accounts to Harley Davidson, a local veterinarian and $240 to order personalized M&M candy.
“She was taking it for herself – the money – from the bank accounts and using it for herself,” Lepsevich told 25 Investigates.
Her accounts, which had held about $47,000 dwindled down to just $500, according to Lepsevich’s attorneys.
Lepsevich’s nursing home bills continue to mount and the family home on M Street is no longer hers to sell to pay for her care.
Lepsevich said she felt that she was tricked – something Goodman’s attorneys deny.
Goodman and her lawyers wouldn’t talk to 25 Investigates about the case, but the former tenant’s attorneys told a civil court judge that Lepsevich wanted Goodman to have the house and knew exactly what she was doing.
“There was no issue whatsoever of competency or diminished capacity,” said Goodman’s attorney, India Minchoff, in court last week.
Goodman’s lawyers are defending her actions in the civil trial, which is ongoing.
Goodman also testified last week that she did nothing wrong.
“Frances wanted me to have access to money in that account for any particular needs at all,” said Goodman in court. “She said she could never take the money with her and she provided me access to it at any cost.”
Yet long before the case made it to family court, Elder Protective Services reported Frances Lepsevich as a possible victim of elder abuse after first responders were called to her home last year.
“First thing that my partner and I noticed as we walked in was the strong smell of urine emanating throughout the apartment,” Brian Bailey of Boston EMS testified in the ongoing civil trial.
In this February 2016 report sent to the Suffolk County District Attorney and obtained by 25 Investigates, Lepsevich reported she did not have heat for a period of time at her home and didn’t have access to her funds.
But more than a year later, no one from DA Dan Conley’s office had spoken to Lepsevich.
When asked why investigators hadn’t yet spoken with the 90-year-old, Conley said, “I'll have to look at that. There's a possibility that it slipped through the cracks a bit perhaps. I don't know. A year is too long.”
But Conley now says his office is investigating and tells 25 Investigates’ Eric Rasmussen he anticipates filing criminal charges.
“I anticipate it,” Conley told 25 Investigates. “It's up the grand jury ultimately what will happen but the case appears to lay out a credible claim of financial scam and abuse of this victim.”
While Lepsevich waits for the conclusion of her civil trial, her attorneys say nursing home bills continue to mount.
At this point, Tracey Goodman has not been indicted or criminal charged.
The civil trial in this case is still ongoing.
25 Investigates reached out to her lawyers again Tuesday. They didn’t want to comment on the ongoing case but told 25 Investigates the evidence will demonstrate the accusations against Goodman are false and that Goodman was the only person to provide assistance to Lepsevich for years.