69-year-old Timothy Bartlett of Deltona has been charged with three crimes since being connected to an alleged scheme to pose as a cancer patient in order to defraud multiple nonprofit organizations. He's been in custody at the Volusia County Branch Jail since Wednesday.
According to a statement released by the Volusia Sheriff's Office this week, Bartlett had applied to nonprofit organizations for financial assistance under the guise that he was suffering from cancer. The VSO received a tip in April from a woman in Tampa who runs one of these nonprofits, and said Bartlett received money intended for patients to afford the cost of living while they're in treatment or recovery.
The woman told the VSO that Bartlett had received $5,000 from her organization, using 'Sally Holmes' as an alias to swindle the money. Upon further investigation, detectives with the VSO came to the conclusion that four other nonprofits had been defrauded by Bartlett. These other ones were located in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Wisconsin according to the VSO's report.
Bartlett was booked into the county jail on $20,500 bond for his alleged scheme. He was charged with one count of organized scheme to defraud, one of grand theft between $750 and $5,000, and one of grand theft between $5,000 and $10,000. Prior to that, he also has one misdemeanor offense from November of last year, in which he allegedly failed to appear in court for driving without a valid license.
"I have seen a lot of morally reprehensible scams in my career, but this has to be one of the worst," said Sheriff Mike Chitwood in a statement to his personal Facebook page. "I owe a sincere THANK YOU to the founder of the nonprofit who reached out and made this case possible, and to the detectives who gathered all the evidence to put this scumbag in jail where he belongs!"
