LOS ANGELES
In sentencing Carol Ejdowski to nearly five years for fraud, U.S. District Court Judge Dolly M. Gee didn’t mince words to described Ejdowski’s crimes, officials said today.
Judge Gee said “the facts of this case are particularly despicable.”
Pointing to the defendant’s multiple prior convictions for fraud, grand theft and perjury, Judge Gee called Ejdowski “a recidivist of the highest order” who had “shown her disrespect for the law repeatedly,” officials said.
The judge sentenced Ejdowski to four years and 10 months behind bars, noting the woman’s 40-year history of fraudulent conduct.
Ejdowski used checks stolen from a woman in a West Hills nursing home to purchase hundreds of dollars in merchandise – a crime she committed while on supervised released in another federal fraud case.
Although the low loss amount was low, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo that Ejdowski’s “criminal conduct was particularly deplorable because it targeted a defenseless, 70-year-old, half-paralyzed woman who was living by herself in a nursing home/rehab facility.”
In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors detailed Ejdowski’s history of fraud offenses, with convictions going back to the 1970s, according to officials.
Ejdowski, a transient who had recently been residing in Beverly Hills, committed the offense while she was on supervised release, officials indicated.
When she defrauded the elderly victim, officials said Ejdowski was serving a three-year period of supervised released after pleading guilty to passport fraud related to a credit card scam, serving a 63-month federal prison term and being released in late 2012.
Ejdowski plead guilty in September 2014 to one count of bank fraud, admitting that she stole checks from the victim that she used to purchase merchandise at Costco and Walmart. Ejdowski was originally scheduled to be sentenced on April 29, but she failed to appear for that hearing and was a fugitive until she was arrested and incarcerated in August, according to authorities.
While Ejdowski admitted in court that she used stolen checks, prosecutors argued that she also used the victim’s credit cards in a scheme that cause $1,925 in losses.
“This case demonstrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to prosecuting those who prey upon the most vulnerable in our community,” said U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “Standing alone, the monetary loss in this case did not adequately reflect the gravity of defendant’s crime, but today’s significant sentence should send a message to all those who would seek to victimize the vulnerable.”
The FBI investigated this case.