Crime & Safety
Man Faces Fraud Charges for Duping Tosa Woman Who Dialed a Wrong Number
When an 82-year-old woman accidentally dialed the wrong number for her plumber, the man who answered admits he played her along, came to her home and took her money. And he didn't see anything wrong with that.
A 22-year-old Milwaukee man is facing charges after he allegedly duped an elderly Wauwatosa woman into thinking he was a plumber.
She had accidentally dialed the wrong number and called him by mistake.
Michael Deangelo White was charged Friday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court with one count of theft by fraud. If convicted, he faces up to nine months in prison and $10,000 in fines.
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According to the criminal complaint:
On March 26, an 82-year-old woman living in the 2000 block of North 83rd Street tried to contact a plumbing company to fix a problem at her house – a legitimate company she used before.
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However, the woman forgot to add the toll-free portion of the phone number and mistakenly called White's instead of the plumber.
White told the woman the plumbing company was under new management and that he would come to her house to look into her problem.
He visited her home, and after looking at her plumbing issue, White told her it would cost $260 for the repairs and that he needed a $35 service fee to start.
The woman told him she just wanted to pay the whole thing at once and wrote White a check. He left in a car she could describe only as an older model sedan.
Several hours later, the victim’s daughter became concerned that White hadn’t come back, so she called the number again and told him to return and fix the problem at once or she would contact the police.
She also went to the bank to try and halt payment on the check, but bank officials said it had already been cashed.
caught up to White on April 6, and he admitted going to the woman's house to look at the plumbing problem and that he had been given a check for $260. But he said he didn’t consider it stealing because the woman wrote the check out to him of her own free will.
When asked why he didn’t return the money, White said he had already committed the money to something else. He said he didn’t want to return to the residence after the victim’s daughter said she was planning to call police.
It was therefore, he said, “too late.”
White is being held in Milwaukee County Jail while awaiting trial.
