An elderly Lakewood patient was taken advantage of by a home health aid, who used her patient’s credit cards to purchase merchandise, concert tickets and more, police said this evening.
On Februrary 4, 2016 Special Officer Daniel Debartolomeis received information that a certified home health aid, identified as 24-year-old Brittany Castellanos of Asbury Park, NJ was possibly taking financial advantage of her patient.
“Further investigation by Detective Michael Cavallo revealed that over the course of approximately six weeks Castelanos occrued more than $20,000 worth of online merchandise, including concert tickets and a limo ride, by fraudulently using her 73-year-old patient’s credit cards,” Detective Sergeant Greg Staffordsmith said.
Earlier this afternoon, Brittany Castellanos was arrested and charged with Theft, Fraudulant Use of a Credit Card and Endangering the Welfare of an Incompetant Person.
Bail was set by the Honorable Judge Scott Basen in the amount of $15,000 no 10%.
Anyone with additional information is asked to contact Detective Michael Cavallo at 732-363-0200 ext. 5317
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You have to do background checks when hiring for this kind of job.
What is a CERTIFIED home health aid? Is she an employee of an agency?
Wow. That is scary. A background check won’t always help either. This is very tempting to an aide. They often feel they’re not being compensated sufficiently and deserve some extra bonus. So, even if they never stole before, if they see the card, they just go online, boom boom boom, click click and done.
Yes she was from an agency .. She was also being paid very well and only worked 20 hours a week she took the cards and while he was in the hospital continued to rack up charges
thats horrible!! nebach on the agency
It’s people like her that give us cna chha a bad name hope she learns a valuable lesson from this….. and regardless if she thinks she doesn’t get paid well NONE OF US DO and we don’t steal..