Some stories make you sick to the gut. This is one of them. Dianne Bayley shares the details of how her 78 year old father was stung by callous conwoman Micha McKerr, a 43 year old chameleon who specialises in stealing from the elderly. Bayley, a writer and social media manager, doesn’t hold her punches – explaining how the one-day-redhead, next-day-blonde changes personas to stay one step ahead of the law. And when the inevitable arrest happens, manages to slither away with another suspended sentence or “house arrest”, setting her up for a fresh attack on the more naively trusting occupants of retirement homes. – Alec Hogg    Â
By Dianne Bayley*
Micha Mary Jane McKerr, 43, is a convicted criminal who took my 78-year old father’s life savings over a period of two months and is now sitting in a cosy “rehab centre”, leaving a broke – and broken – old man where my dad once was.
Here’s how it works: She makes friends with the elderly people in the village her mother is residing at, and gains their trust. She borrows a little money and then gives it back if the elderly person remembers to ask for it.
Then, its game on. My father’s wallet went missing and was then returned by a mysterious “Brenda Horowitz” who called to say she “found the wallet in a parking lot”. She refused when I offered to collect it, and left it with the guards at my Dad’s village some days later.
It looked in order – all the cards were there. Then, the “big spend” started. Ironically, the same bank that has called me to verify my own purchases when they seems suspicious did not notice that almost R200 000 was “removed” from my Dad’s account . . . starting with R1 000 here and R1 500 there – and then up to R18 000 in one night at a casino; and R10 000 in a single casino transaction.
It didn’t strike the bank as odd that a 78-year-old customer with a specific spending pattern for 50 years was suddenly frequenting casinos at 2am and sending “instant money” from a cellphone. (My father can’t drive after dark and does not own a smartphone.)
Turns out is not McKerr’s first offence – by a long shot. She was already serving a five-year suspended sentence for housebreaking, fraud and theft involving another elderly couple at another retirement village in Olivedale in 2013 when she was arrested on 10 May 2016.
No stranger to McKerr, Colonel May of Douglasdale Police Station arrived the home rented by McKerr’s mother in the retirement village. She’d been hidden in a cupboard and was arrested immediately.
Between 10 May and the final sentencing on 29 June 2016, McKerr was not given bail. The Prosecutor strongly suggested a jail sentence, as McKerr’s history of getting a “slap on the wrist” from the courts appears not to have rehabilitated her at all. Her pattern of going to court, pleading “mental illness” (bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder) and “I’m a single mother” (her son is almost 19 and doesn’t live in this country) seems to work well for her.
Working in silos instead of collecting all the evidence and warrants against the offender, our courts allow her to sign in at local rehab clinics and pay fines, suspending any real sentences. She appears to re-offend quickly after this type of “rehabilitation”.
On 29 June, the Magistrate decided not to invoke the suspended sentence, claiming the Prosecutor had not indicated there was one. Neither mentioned the warrants for her arrest that, according to the SAPS, await in Cape Town and KwaZulu Natal. McKerr – who has also used the name Paula Labuschagne when confronted by police – was once again not jailed, though she was found guilty of more than 90 counts of theft and fraud.
She was handed a sentence of three years’ house arrest, in a leafy northern suburbs neighbourhood . . . while my father is now both broke and broken.
There is apparently nothing I can do about the sentence, so I write this in an attempt to warn other vulnerable and/or elderly people and to encourage banks to pay more attention to the spending patterns of their clients over the age of 60.
As I wait to hear whether the bank will be assisting with returning some of the money, my father is not the man he was even three months ago. The sprightly old gent with a daily routine now calls me several times a day to ask where his bank card is . . . McKerr stripped him of the dignity of drawing his own money to pay for his daily groceries.
If a court’s sentences shows our legal system’s regard for the elderly and vulnerable, then this is truly “no country for old men” and people with older parents should be aware that tricksters like McKerr, who come across as sweet, helpful and completely confident, will take advantage of anyone they can.
They are players . . . old people, banking systems and even the justice system are their playgrounds. And they do it again and again because they win.
- Dianne Bayley is a writer and social media manager from Johannesburg. Her writing includes travel, health & wellness, marketing, branding, environment and, most recently, attempts to protect the elderly from predators.
