Photo by James Short.
A Philadelphia woman with an extensive criminal history of scamming elderly men out of their money has been sentenced to probation for stealing $116,000 from a victim in Lower Gwynedd.
Court records show 62-year-old Brenda Miguel pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft by deception on April 1, and was subsequently sentenced to seven years of probation. According to a spokesperson for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, Miguel was also ordered to make full restitution to the victim, which included a $20,000 upfront deposit at the time of her guilty plea.
In July 2022, an 84-year-old man arrived at the Lower Gwynedd Police Department to file a report that he was the victim of fraud. The man told investigators that in December 2021, he had become lost in a parking lot at the King of Prussia Mall and was approached by a woman named “Linda Criter,” who offered to help him find his car.
Thinking he had made a new friend, he and “Criter” exchanged phone numbers and the two began meeting often for coffee or lunch in the Lower Gwynedd area, police said. A short period into their friendship, however, “Criter” began asking the man to loan her money, stating her assets were tied up in her deceased husband’s estate and she needed money for her wedding planning business as well as to pay contractors working on her real estate properties, according to charging documents.
Investigators said “Criter” told the man she did not have a bank account and each check would need to be made out to “John Gray.” From January 2022 through July 2022, the man provided “Criter” with 17 checks made out to “John Gray,” which amounted to a total of $116,250, police said.
An additional three checks were also pre-written by the man, totaling another $29,700, however police said they were voided before the money was removed from the account.
All the checks were cashed at a check cashing store in Carteret, NJ, and upon review of their records, police determined that driver’s license used to crash the checks was “immediately recognized to be a fake identification card.”
It was later determined through investigation that “Linda Criter” was actually Brenda Miguel, then of Cherry Hill, NJ, police said, adding that Miguel had been previously convicted in multiple states for theft by deception and similar charges in connection with schemes to deceive elderly men out of money via “feigning a friendship or romantic relationship.”
Miguel was initially remanded to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility following her arraignment on Feb. 7, 2023, however she was released from custody after posting $99,000 cash bail three weeks later.
