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Two days after an Aspen Hill man was sentenced last week in Montgomery County Circuit Court to three years in state prison for stealing more than $189,000 from a semi-lucid 91-year-old widow and her late husband, that woman's legal guardian had a message to deliver.

Bethesda-based attorney Robert McCarthy said anyone aspiring to be like James Brian Gendimenico should take note.

"If you mess with these little old ladies and Bobby McCarthy finds out, you are going to the state penitentiary," McCarthy said. "When people are doing a cost-benefit analysis of committing this kind of crime we want them to think about (this)."

Gendimenico was sentenced Aug. 30.

Over the course of two years, between 2007 and 2009, Gendimenico befriended the woman and her husband, who has since died, and liquidated $300,000 in savings as well as more than $240,000 in home equity. Gendimenico was ordered by the court to pay $189,000 in restitution, according to court documents.

When the woman's husband died in 2009, she could not afford to bury him. He was eventually buried with the help of taxpayer money, McCarthy said.

The Gazette is not naming the woman because she is the victim of a crime.

Gendimenico pleaded guilty in May to a theft scheme for more than $500, according to online court records. His lawyer, Samantha Sandler, a public defender, could not be reached for comment after several attempts.

Neighbors said Gendimenico's wife and daughter moved to Pennsylvania. They also could not be reached.

Gendimenico met the woman and her husband when the couple got lost in their Aspen Hill neighborhood and pulled into a Shell service station for directions, McCarthy said. Gendimenico, who was known to have a gambling issue, was playing Keno in the station, McCarthy said.

Gendimenico agreed to lead the family back to their home. During the following two years he obtained the power of attorney from the couple and had an agreement to manage their finances as well as perform other odd jobs, said McCarthy and Assistant State's Attorney Robert Hill. The problem, said Hill, who prosecuted the case, was they didn't need any help with their finances.

"They owned their home and had a steady income that they could live on," Hill said. "They could have just kept cooking along without dipping into their savings."

The couple had no family except the husband's elderly brother, who lives in Texas. The woman now lives in a nursing home and her rent is mostly paid for with taxpayer money, McCarthy said.

"But for this thief, I could have kept her in her home," he said. "Most of the time, in these cases, you want to keep people in their homes and around their things."

Sonia Hernandez, who lives on Parkland Court, across the street from where Gendimenico had lived, said he was not popular with his immediate neighbors and often got into shouting matches with his wife outside.

"They were nice to us, but they had a lot of problems as a couple," Hernandez said. "The daughter was very nice, I feel bad for his family."

McCarthy said he has 80 similar cases.

"That's why it's so good to have a sentence like this," he said. "The worst part is she's not completely incompetent. She knows she lost all of her things but still says stuff like, ‘Brian wouldn't have done that.'"

snorris@gazette.net