A woman charged with keeping four adults with mental disabilities locked in a squalid Philadelphia basement while collecting their Social Security checks may have victimized dozens of others, says the Philadelphia Inquirer. When Linda Ann Weston was arrested Sunday, she had identification records for as many as 50 people in her possession, including power of attorney paperwork, forms of identification, and Social Security numbers. The documents suggest that Weston has been running a wide-ranging fraud operation.
“She might have been doing this for years, probably since she got out of prison,” said police Lt. Ray Evers. Weston, 51, served eight years in prison for killing a 25-year-old man who starved to death in her apartment in 1981. She was sentenced in 1985. Two men also were arrested. Investigators expect more charges will be filed as they piece together a timeline of the operation, which took place over at least a year and in several states. Police also face the daunting task of locating the owners of the identification documents in Weston’s possession. “You can’t get any lower than how they preyed on these people,” Evers said of Weston and her alleged accomplices.