Caregiver Accused of Stealing $250K From Elderly Nichols Hills Woman

Nichols Hills police officers are working to arrest a convicted felon accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from an elderly woman.

Investigators say they have already presented charges to the Oklahoma County District Attorney's Office against 55-year-old Anetta Turner of Oklahoma City. Police say Turner ripped off the senior citizen over a long period of time by slowly depleting her bank account.

"It's a bunch of BS," Turner's mother, Lee Etta Hawkins-Palmer said. "It's a bunch of s***."

Hawkins-Palmer does not believe any of the allegations against her daughter to be true.

"Approximately $250,000.00 is no longer in the victim's account," Lt. Casey Nix with Nichols Hills police said.

Police say the elderly woman was surprised when she learned of the accusations against her trusted caregiver.

"How is my daughter going to go to her bank and get that kind of money," Hawkins-Palmer asked.

Police say the senior citizen would sign checks for Turner to cash to go to the grocery store and run other errands. But, investigators believe Turner would routinely write checks to herself. Eventually, police say, her actions wiped out the woman's bank account at the Inter Bank in northwest Oklahoma City.

"[Turner] was going to the grocery store like every other day and spending approximately $200," Nix said. "That was excessive."

For more than 20 years, Hawkins-Palmer worked in Nichols Hills for the same woman her daughter is accused of stealing from.

"They [are] prejudice because it's out there in Nichols Hills," Hawkins-Palmer said. "I don't care what them police said. They are saying what somebody else [has] told them."

Officers first learned of the crime in October when employees at Inter Bank became suspicious and tipped off police.

Turner could face five counts of fraud. News 9 reached out to Turner's attorney on Friday for comment, but phone calls were not returned.

This is not the first time Turner has been in trouble with the law. According to court records, Turner was convicted on possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia charges in the early 1990s.