A former Tiverton resident who worked as a private nurse here before moving to Florida has been charged with bilking an elderly Tiverton resident out of more than $27,000, using his debit card hundreds of times to make purchases on Amazon, pay her bills, order takeout, take dance lessons and make other purchases.

Police in Port Orange, Fla. arrested Randi J. Walsh, 36, currently of Port Orange but formerly of Tiverton, in late August on fugitive from justice charges out of Rhode Island. She is currently back in the Ocean State and was arraigned Monday, Sept. 18, on four charges: Exploitation of an elder with damages between $500 and $100,000, and three counts of larceny over $500 on a person 65 years of age or older. Bond was set at $10,000, a no contact order was issued, and her next court date has been scheduled for December.

Hundreds of transactions

The investigation was led by Tiverton patrol officer Shaun P. Wilson, who spent six months piecing together voluminous financial and Internet records, and working with Apple and Amazon, to make the case.

It began in early February, when Wilson and fellow officers were dispatched to a Tiverton home for a  larceny report.

The victim’s granddaughter told officers that her grandfather’s bank account was almost empty, and she suspected Walsh, who worked as a private nurse for her homebound father from October 2021 through June 2022. During that time Walsh had access to the alleged victim’s debit card to purchase medicine and anything else he might need around the house. The daughter told officers later that she never would have suspected the private nurse of stealing from her father. Until she moved to Florida, she said, Walsh was “very much invited” into the family and knew them socially as well.

After discovering his finances in disarray, the daughter took dozens of screen shots from Walsh’s online media presence that “line up” with some of the purchases she suspected were made by her, and also took screenshots of financial transactions for which her father’s debit account was used.

Following up with that information, Officer Walsh spent months communicating with Apple and Amazon to confirm and further investigate the purchases, and received warrants to review financial information. He also spoke to officials at the Rhode Island Department of Health, and officials at Visitng Nurse Services of Newport and Bristol Counties, where Walsh formerly worked.

In all, he wrote in a report on the matter, Walsh’s unauthorized purchases total some $27,600 and transactions in Rhode Island, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina.