Ex-Richmond woman convicted of ID theft for secretly selling $25K of elderly man’s stock, pocketing gains

A former Richmond woman has been convicted after fraudulently selling off more than $25,000 of an elderly Spring Grove man’s stock. The man said he considered her like a daughter.

Sherry Ann Mandel, 51, pleaded guilty Thursday to aggravated identity theft between $10,000 and $100,000 of a person older than 60 years, a Class 1 felony, according to McHenry County court records.

She was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay the man $25,300 in restitution. Mandel, who now lives in Genoa City, Wisconsin, was ordered to have no contact with the victim, the judgment order said. For a Class 1 felony conviction, Mandel could have received up to 15 years in prison.

Her attorney declined to comment.

Authorities said on Aug. 17, 2023, Mandel obtained the social security number of a then-86-year-old Richmond man and submitted an address change to a stock transfer service Computershare, placing her own address on the account. She did this without the man’s permission, the criminal complaint said.

She then, without permission, forged the man’s signature on a transaction request form, sold 245 shares of his Abbott stock, signed the back of a check from Abbott in the amount of $25,306.05 and deposited the money into her own account on Sept. 8, 2023, the complaint said. The indictment also said she stood in a “position of trust or confidence” during the alleged offenses.

In a petition for order of protection against Mandel filed Jan. 24, 2024, the elderly man said he and his wife have known Mandel for more than 20 years and considered her “like a daughter” and her children like their grandchildren. The couple “bought and built her a brand new home when she could not afford a home for herself and her children,” he wrote. The couple shared a bank account with Mandel and before learning she had stolen his identity, forged his signature and withdrew $25,000 from his stock account, they had “added her in our will putting her on one of my stock accounts,” the petition stated.

When the man confronted Mandel about the missing money, he wrote that she “played on my age to make me think I could not remember and tried to convince me that she was in my home and had asked me to sign over the paperwork to [withdraw] the money,” he wrote in the petition. “That encounter never happened.”

The man also asked that Mandel, who was a nurse at a Round Lake Beach facility where his wife resided, not be allowed to have any contact with her, the petition said.

In exchange for her guilty plea, additional charges were dismissed, including identity theft, financial exploitation of an elderly person older than 80 for more than $5,000, theft or unauthorized control of $10,000 to $100,000 and forgery or altering document, court records show.