A local nursing assistant is in hot water with the feds, slapped with a host of charges for allegedly swindling the elderly folks she was supposed to be taking care of. Markeisha A. Hill, 35, hailing from Granite City, is staring down the barrel of serious time for reportedly using her patients’ credit cards and bank info to treat herself to goodies without an ounce of their consent.
Accused of a double whammy of access device fraud and a six-pack of aggravated identity theft, along with sitting on a stash of five or more ID documents, Hill has the law coming at her from all sides. Charged by a federal grand jury, nurses who were supposed to attend to their needs, instead, she played personal shopper with their dough, as per the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
"Financial crimes against the elderly are prevalent, but it’s especially disturbing when nursing home patients are targeted and victimized by the medical professionals who are entrusted with their care,” U.S. Attorney Rachelle Aud Crowe said in a statement. Hill, who hawked her so-called caring services at University Nursing and Rehabilitation in Edwardsville and Meridian Village in Glen Carbon, might have pulled the wool over the eyes of trusting families from October 2022 till November 2023.
Heralded as a profession of noble calling, caregivers like Hill are expected to embody a trust that's as solid as bedrock. Yet, said David Bolin, Acting Supervisor for the U.S. Secret Service Springfield Resident Office, caregivers were allegedly busy dipping into the accounts of those they watched over. "That trust should never be violated,” Bolin proclaimed, pride standing firmly in the law enforcement’s corner for championing the alleged victims’ cause.
Bearing in mind that an indictment is not a conviction, Hill’s got her presumption of innocence until a jury of her peers figures otherwise. Nonetheless, should the gavel come down hard, she could face 15 years for fraud, a mandatory 2 years for identity theft, and another 5 for her ID collection. Official sleuths from the U.S. Secret Service and local PDs in Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, and Granite City have their noses to the grindstone on this one, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Zoe Gross and David Dean leading the charge in the courtroom.
