A Vancouver certified nursing assistant who stole tens of thousands of dollars from an elderly woman and hundreds more from a quadriplegic woman was sentenced Thursday to more than a year in prison.
Court records show that Clark County Superior Court Judge Daniel Stahnke sentenced Kate Vernier-Fabian, 31, to 14 months in prison on two counts of first-degree identity theft and a single count of first-degree theft. Vernier-Fabian also received a suspended one-year sentence for a charge of third-degree theft, a misdemeanor.
Vernier-Fabian was ordered to pay $21,968 in restitution, according to an affidavit from the sentencing hearing.
She originally appeared in court in August 2017 on charges of first-degree theft, two counts of first-degree identity theft, four counts of forgery, two counts of money laundering and third-degree theft. Her guilty pleas to the reduced number of charges were part of an agreement between her attorney and state prosecutors.
According to a probable cause affidavit, an 87-year-old local woman fell and hit her head in February 2017, went into a coma and died three days later. When her daughter went through her finances after her death, she noticed large sums of money had been withdrawn from her mother’s bank account.
Vernier-Fabian had been the victim’s caregiver for more than four months, the affidavit states.
In an interview with investigators, Vernier-Fabian admitted to taking the woman’s checks, filling them out and signing her name, the court document states.
A search warrant was served on Vernier-Fabian’s credit union account, and investigators discovered that she had deposited stolen pension checks for the woman’s husband, stolen Chase Bank checks and a stolen retirement check. The total loss was $22,162.69 — one check alone was for $20,000, according to the affidavit.
During their investigation, authorities also learned that Vernier-Fabian, over the course of three months, had stolen $325 in groceries from a quadriplegic woman she cared for, another probable cause affidavit states.
Vernier-Fabian worked for Innovative Services NW, a local nonprofit that serves children and adults through its programs, including pediatric therapy, employment services and a janitorial program. She told court officials she worked for the nonprofit for 4 1/2 years.
According to her plea, Vernier-Fabian agreed that if taken to trial, prosecutors would have presented evidence showing she falsely assumed the identities of the two victims she cared for and stole more than $5,000 from one of them and less than $575 from the other.
The plea states that Vernier-Fabian disputes the thefts from the quadriplegic woman, but she decided to plead guilty to take advantage of the prosecution’s offer.
