Montana Attorney General Tim Fox told KGVO News on Thursday that a Miles City woman pleaded guilty to felony elder exploitation and pay restitution of over $94,000 to the victim’s estate.

“Today we announced that a woman from Miles City, 60 year-old Del Linda Frost, was arraigned on charges of theft of property by embezzlement and exploitation of an older person,” said Fox. “Both of those charges are felonies. She changed her plea to guilty on the exploitation charge of a man named Arthur Yamada, who is unfortunately now deceased.”

Fox provided more details of the case.

“This woman was appointed first as a temporary conservator, and then as a permanent one, and over the course of several years she embezzled funds from Mr. Yamata while he was in a retirement home,” he said. “Kudos to the retirement home’s business manager because they began to see bounced checks and upon investigation originally by the Miles City Police Department, they then referred the matter to our Division of Criminal Investigation. We worked very closely with the Custer County Attorney’s office and determined in fact that Ms. Frost had embezzled close to $100,000 from Mr. Yamata who died last year at the age of 97.”

Fox gave kudos to several individuals for their thorough investigation into the case of elder exploitation.

“We want to thank the Custer County Attorney’s Office, Cody Strietzel, the auditor in our Office of Criminal Investigation, supervising agent Debrah Fosket of our Medicaid Fraud Unit for all of their work, as well as Deputy Custer County Attorney Shawn Quinlan,” he said. “This was a team effort. Ms. Frost has been ordered to pay restitution of $94,000 and also received a suspended sentence.”

In 1995, the Montana Legislature created the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which became operational the following year. The MFCU is dedicated to investigating Medicaid patients' quality of care and ensuring public funds go only to those health care providers who provide legitimate services.

 

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