Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Couple who stole $100k from blind widow sentenced to time served

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A Michigan City husband and wife who admitted stealing more than $100,000 from a local widow have been sentenced to time served in jail.

Bary Bostic, 47, and Robbin Bostic, 41, with a listed address of 425 Walker St., were each charged with a single count of theft, a Class C felony punishable by a term of two to eight years in the Indiana Department of Correction (DOC).

On Wednesday, the Bostics were sentenced to eight years each in the Indiana Department of Correction with all but 16 months and 24 days suspended, the time which they served in the Porter County Jail while waiting disposition of their case.

Under a plea agreement with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the Bostics will serve the balance of their sentence on formal probation.

In her sentencing order, Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper made note of one aggravating factor: “The victim of the crime is blind” and the Bostics were “in a position of trust as (her) caretaker.”

Harper also made note of one mitigating factor: the Bostics admitted their guilt.

Both were accused of stealing and then selling multiple bars of gold, silver, and platinum which belonged to an elderly Chesterton woman under their care.

According to the probable cause affidavit filed by the Chesterton Police Department, on March 16, 2012, officers responded to a burglary complaint in the 300 block of South 10th Street, the elderly woman’s home. The widow was not at the residence at the time but staying instead at hotel in Michigan City, police said.

Responding officers were told by a woman taking care of the home in the widow’s absence that she found a safe in the living room open and a file cabinet opened and all paperwork pertaining to the widow’s late husband’s estate missing, police said.

A short time later, one of the widow’s co-guardians arrived at the scene, where she advised officers that the safe in question had contained silver and platinum bars and coins and that Bary and Robbin Bostic, as the widow’s caregivers, had access to the residence, police said.

Further investigation determined that a Michigan City jeweler who had, over the course of 30 years, sold multiple gold, silver, and platinum bars to the widow’s husband had recently re-purchased many of those bars and had issued multiple checks to the Bostics or to their real estate broker on their behalf, police said.

Those checks include two on Feb. 8 in the amounts of $96,695 and $56,224.45; one on Feb. 9 for $67,080.55; and three on March 9 for $42,695, $14,755, and $45,000, police said.

In addition, police said, in May investigators learned that Ameripawn had re-issued to the widow $118,755.55 for silver and platinum bar and jewelry which the Bostics had pawned there.

The Bostics had been held at the Porter County Jail since November 2012 in lieu of a cash-only bond of $100,000. They petitioned for a lower bond late last year, citing health issues, but Harper rejected their request, noting in her order that, should the Bostics fail to bond out, their medical appointments would be the responsibility of the jail staff.

 

Posted 7/19/2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

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