A Nobleboro woman is facing a felony theft charge after she allegedly stole as much as $1 million from her elderly mother over several years, according to Lincoln County Sheriff’s Detective Scott Hayden.
Debra S. Townsend-Sokoll, 62, of Nobleboro, was indicted by a Lincoln County grand jury March 15 on one class B charge of theft by unauthorized taking. The indictment specifies theft of a value of more than $10,000 between 2006 and 2015.
According to Hayden, former LCSO Detective Bob McFetridge began an investigation into this alleged “elder abuse/exploitation case” two years ago. Hayden took over after McFetridge retired last November.
Townsend-Sokoll’s mother, Barbara Bragg, owned quite a bit of property in Nobleboro and she and her husband had built up “significant wealth,” Hayden said.
After her husband passed away in the late 1990s, Bragg was on her own and doing fine, but at some point Townsend-Sokoll got involved and her mother granted her power of attorney, Hayden said.
Over about five years, Townsend-Sokoll allegedly “sold properties and took some of the funds out of her mother’s bank accounts for her own well-being, not for the best interests of her mother,” Hayden said.
According to Hayden, Bragg is 89 years old and currently living in Bangor. Her financial resources were pretty much drained by the alleged theft.
McFetridge gathered banking records as part of the investigation, so many in fact they were sent off to the New England State Police Information Network in Massachusetts and took a year to be analyzed, Hayden said.
Though a final total of the alleged theft has not yet been determined, Hayden is confident it is at least in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We could be talking anywhere – with everything put together – in excess of a million dollars. It’s hard to tell at this point,” Hayden said.
Despite the allegations of theft, Hayden said Townsend-Sokoll was still paying her mother’s bills.
“Mom had a lot of money, and [Townsend-Sokoll] was able to pay [Bragg’s] bills and still milk [Bragg] for quite a bit at the same time,” Hayden said.
Hayden said the investigation is ongoing and he’s still going through boxes of documents.
Townsend-Sokoll has not been arrested in this case, and Assistant District Attorney Andrew Wright said he believes the D.A.’s office asked for her to be issued a summons for now.
A call to Townsend-Sokoll was not immediately returned.
Townsend-Sokoll is scheduled to be arraigned on the theft charge in Lincoln County Superior Court on April 16 at 8:30 a.m.