HAMILTON - A Butler County courtroom sat stunned and saddened Friday as a 77-year-old woman recounted how a Hamilton man scammed her out of her entire life savings: nearly $140,000.

        “She had the whole courtroom in dead silence. No one said a word while she spoke,” Assistant Prosecutor Lee Oldendick said Friday. “She wanted him to go to prison to keep it from happening to anybody else.”

        Butler County Common Pleas Judge H.J. Bressler sentenced Mark Lunsford, 41, to six years in prison and ordered him to repay $134,444 that he bilked from Elsa Pribble of Fairfield Township. Mr. Lunsford had pleaded guilty to theft by deception against an elderly woman, a second-degree felony, in June.

        Mr. Oldendick said Ms. Pribble, a widow, has struggled to maintain ownership of her house as a result of the financial damage Mr. Lunsford inflicted. She works at a fast-food restaurant, scrubbing floors and toilets, he said, and realizes that she probably won't live to see much, if any, of the repayment Mr. Lunsford owes her.

        He persuaded her to part with her life savings, “and basically cleaned her out,” bit by bit, during a nine-month period that ended in September 2001, he said.

        “We hope our parents will be able to enjoy a certain standard of life in their retirement, and what happened to this lady was that this guy cut into the safety net that she had,” said Fairfield Township Police Capt. Alan Laney.

        Mr. Laney said that after 27 years' experience, “I've never seen anybody put together such an elaborate scheme to get money out of an elderly person.”

        Capt. Laney said Ms. Pribble initially hired Mr. Lunsford to build a fence. Then he concocted a tale that led her to believe she needed to pay him thousands more for private investigators and other expenses to keep her out of trouble with neighbors, zoning inspectors and even judges, Capt. Laney said.

        Mr. Lunsford “basically used the tactic of fear to get her to give him money,” sometimes up to $8,000 at a time, he said. “He found himself a well and he kept going back and dipping in there.”

        Ms. Pribble declined to be interviewed; Capt. Laney said she was embarrassed she fell for Mr. Lunsford's scheme. The case came to light only after her son raised questions about her financial circumstances, he said.

        “The lesson here is the elderly need to be aware there are people who will come up with elaborate schemes to get their money,” Capt. Laney said, “and their adult children need to investigate for their elderly parents and see if they are being taken to the cleaners.”

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