Tennessee mayor charged with stealing almost $400,000 from his own grandmother

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A mayor in Tennessee has been charged with stealing almost $400,000 from his grandmother while she was cared for in a nursing home, suffering from dementia.

Christopher Scott Jones is currently serving as the mayor of Mount Carmel in the northeast of the state.

Residents have called for his resignation, and a Mount Carmel alderman told ABC News: “It’s been a long time coming, I expected this to happen.”

He allegedly wrote cheques to himself from his grandmother’s accounts for more than a year, between November 2014 and January 2016.

Marceline Carpenter died on 2 January, 2016, at an assisted care centre in West Virginia.

The Kingsport Times-News reports that in March of that year Ms Carpenter’s daughter — Jones’ own mother — Barbara Jo Long, and two of his uncles, Robert and Gary Wayne Carpenter, filed a lawsuit in Randolph County, West Virginia.

They alleged that Jones stole almost $394,000 from Ms Carpenter’s estate while she suffered from dementia towards the end of her life.

Ms Carpenter was resident in a nursing home from February 2015 onwards and was not competent to make financial decisions or give Jones power of attorney.

In 2017, Jones failed to appear in court to answer the charges and was ordered to pay his mother and uncles a total of $571,569 — $393,939 in compensation, $131,313 in punitive damages, $6,200 in attorney fees, and $40,117 in pre-trial interest. An unpaid balance is subject to seven per cent interest annually.

Jones initially contested the West Virginia ruling, claiming it was not valid in Tennessee, but a judge ruled against him as that was where the money was deposited.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation began looking into Mr Jones in August 2019 at the request of 3rd District Attorney General Dan Armstrong.

Last week, the Hawkins County Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Mr Jones with one count of theft over $250,000.

He was arrested and booked into the Hawkins County Jail on 10 February on a $300,000 bond. Theft over $250,000 is a Class A felony punishable by 15 to 25 years in jail if found guilty.

Jones was previously a police officer, detective and fire chief in Mount Carmel, until 2013 when he was fired by the former mayor, Larry Frost.

In an alleged sting operation, Mr Jones stole pills that were in a jacket turned into police having been found in a park. No criminal charges were filed.

The following year Jones was elected a city alderman, and in 2016 he became mayor, having beaten Mr Frost in an election. He has said publicly that he has no plans to seek re-election this year.