Couple Charged With Stealing $1 Million
From Elderly Woman
By Taylor K. Vecsey
(08/20/09) A grand jury has indicted a former Shelter Island Town justice and her husband for allegedly stealing over $1 million from an elderly Water Mill woman who suffered from dementia, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota’s office.
 Suffolk District Attorney's Office
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After a two-year investigation, Katherine Z. Pope, 56, and Wayne Pope, 57, were charged with one count each of first-degree grand larceny, a felony, for allegedly stealing from the late Mary Abbott Estabrook between Feb. 2005 and April of this year. In a press release issued this afternoon by the district attorney's office, Ms. Estabrook “suffered from diminished mental capacity,” toward the end of her life. She died on July 4 at 89.
Ms. Pope served one term as a town justice, from 1998 to 2002.
Mr. Pope worked occasionally as a handyman in Ms. Estabrook’s house on Cobb Road in Water Mill, and that was how they insinuated themselves into her life, Robert Clifford, the spokesman for the district attorney, said. The couple each “attained powers of attorney at some point,” which they used for some of the transactions, Mr. Clifford said, “so that’s how I believe they accessed important financial information. . . .”
Ms. Pope, who has a law office on Shelter Island but whose legal address is in Turnbridge, Vt., was also charged with two counts of first-degree identity theft, a felony.
In the press release, Mr. Spota said that the former town justice “presented herself as Ms. Estabrook during telephone stock transaction in 2006 during which more than 12,000 shares of the victim’s stocks were liquidated.” The Exxon stock was worth $793,000, Mr. Clifford said.
The investigation “uncovered evidence that $750,000 of the proceeds from the stock sales ended up in Katherine Pope’s escrow account and was eventually used to purchase, for cash, a house in Vermont,” he said.
Mr. Clifford said that the Popes bought the Vermont house for $650,000 without a mortgage and used the leftover money to buy a new automobile, to make a partial payment on a mortgage on their house in the historic neighborhood of Shelter Island Heights, and for living expenses.
The district attorney's office did not provide details on the Pope's other alleged thefts from Mrs. Estabrook that brought the total to more than $1 million.
Mr. Pope had been arrested on a felony complaint on April 28. Ms. Pope surrendered herself on the order of the district attorney at the Suffolk County Criminal Court in Riverhead Thursday morning.
Mr. Pope, who was born in London, England, was held on a $100,000 cash or $300,000 bond. Ms. Pope was released on $250,000 bond late Thursday, Mr. Clifford said. The couple is due back in court on Sept. 1.
According to online sources, Ms. Pope holds a judicial degree from St. John’s University and was admitted to the bar in 1988. She lost reelection to William A. Sulahian by a small margin in 2002.