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Crime & Safety

4-Year Sentence for New Lenox Caretaker Accused of Stealing from Elderly Tinley Park Woman

Caretaker told Cook County investigators that she had a history of gambling addiction.

Earlier this year, a caretaker accused of stealing $65,000 from an elderly Tinley Park woman told Cook County investigators that she suffered from gambling addiction. The money had been long lost by the time police caught up with her.

Holly Ann Horst, 42, of New Lenox, pled guilty to the financial exploitation of an elderly person on April 8 and was sentenced to 4 years in prison with fines of $665, Cook County court records show.

She was arrested late last year after an investigation by revealed that she had taken at least $65,000 from her wheelchair-bound employer’s bank account without permission. According to police, Horst was only authorized to pay herself between $500 and $600 a week for her work as a caregiver.

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Horst cashed more than $14,000 of authorized checks in Hammond, IN, and Highland, IN, between January and July, according to the Lake County Prosecutor’s Office in Indiana, which as of late last year had charges pending of its own. However, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said no charges had been filed as of Tuesday.

Will County prosecutors had also contemplated forgery charges but temporarily declined rather than spend taxpayer’s money on the same conviction, Tinley Park Police Cmdr. Pat McCain said.

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“If something happened (in Cook County) and she wasn’t convicted, they could have reinstated the charges,” he said.

Cook County court records show that Horst is a graduate of Oak Forest High School. Before pleading guilty to financial exploitation, she told a parole officer that she had been seeing a Will County psychiatrist who diagnosed her with gambling addiction in 2009 and that the disease had ruined two previous jobs.

She said she spent much of her free time in casinos and stopped attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings two summers ago because “it just wasn’t working.”

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