ORANGE — Attorney Joseph Pacella, who is representing the Idaho woman alleged to have been involved in fraudulent invoices that ultimately drained $338,000 from the town of Orange’s coffers, said his client was the victim of a romance scheme.
Jennifer Grasmick, 51, of Nampa, Idaho, was taken into custody in her town by area authorities last May on suspicion of defrauding Orange out of $68,000. She was released from custody on $5,000 bail in June after pleading not guilty to a felony charge of larceny over $1,200, according to the defendant’s Superior Court docket. She is expected to appear again in Franklin County Superior Court on April 17 for a pretrial conference.
“Jennifer Grasmick is innocent. She is being persecuted as another victim of this scheme, likely being perpetrated by foreign individuals,” Pacella said. “She was duped and then taken advantage of online and had no intent to commit any criminal act.”
In a phone interview, Pacella argued that his client “never received a dollar” from the alleged scheme, and had deposited the check and transferred the funds to bitcoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency, as a favor to a foreign scammer posing as a love interest.
The attorney added that there is “absolutely no evidence whatsoever” that his client had anything to do with filing fraudulent invoice forms that resulted in the issuance of a check.
“She’s a vulnerable senior citizen with limited education and serious health issues, living in Idaho and she was groomed online by a person that pretended to be a love interest,” Pacella said. “She was duped into depositing this check and trying to send this money back to the person at their choice of methods. It’s interesting that that fraudster was frustrated with her because she had no idea how to use Coinbase (the bitcoin bank) or these other accounts to send the money that were chosen by the fraudster because it was less traceable.”
Pacella feels a more thorough investigation would have revealed his client’s innocence.
“She had been groomed for many, many months by this supposed love interest. … They had gotten her information and set up the [Coinbase] account. She had never used Coinbase before. They get all her information because she’s an easy target — lonely, depressed, vulnerable, trusting, and then they court her for many months, convince them that they’re real and that they’re sincere and a good person, and then they plug her into a scheme,” he recounted. “[They did this] by telling her, ‘I’m out of the country for work, and I don’t have access to money, and someone’s loaning me money. Can I have them send you the check? Can you help me out and just turn it around to me?'”
The alleged international fraudsters had targeted Orange with multiple fraudulent invoices. Pacella said the W-9 form that is alleged to have been signed by Grasmick followed an instance of the scammers gaining access to town employees’ email accounts, but the defense attorney argues the state cannot prove that Grasmick ever signed the fraudulent W-9. He added that the prosecution seems to agree that Grasmick had no involvement in breaking into the town’s email system or authorizing the check.
While the prosecution alleges that the invoice was in Grasmick’s name, Pacella feels it was written in a way that should have raised suspicion.
“You look at the invoice and you say, ‘How could they even have approved this?’ It looks like a very simple individual wrote it, which would make no sense in the context of a road project,” Pacella said. “You’re not issuing a check to an entity and you’re sending it to Idaho, which makes no sense. You’re not hiring an Idaho entity to complete a project in Massachusetts — that makes no sense. So this should have been flagged and never should have been issued.”
Northwestern District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Melissa Sippel declined to comment on the case on Thursday, as it is ongoing.
Orange Police Chief James Sullivan, when reached by phone on Thursday, explained that he did not wish to comment on the ongoing case. He added that updates on the remainder of the stolen funds will be made public as the investigation unfolds.
“The town of Orange is the one that’s lost in this case,” Sullivan said.