# Woman, 26, Busted For Allegedly Trying To Grift Elderly Husband Out Of $1 Million



## Crackers Phinn (Dec 27, 2019)

*Attempt to cash $1 million check at a Tampa Amscot leads to woman’s arrest, authorities say*

Lin Helena Halfon, 26, told employees there that she was going to use the money to buy a yacht in Miami with her husband, 77-year-old Tampa businessman Richard Rappaport, court records show. Rappaport’s name was also on the check and because he wasn’t there, Amscot employees refused to cash it or three other checks Halfon brought in later that day.

The eyebrow-raising attempts sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in Halfon’s arrest last week on charges of money laundering, organized fraud and exploitation of an elderly person. During her first court appearance, a judge set her bail at $1 million.

When investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Tampa Police Department first contacted him about the checks, Rappaport said he wanted to give his wife the benefit of the doubt, according to a warrant affidavit. He said he didn’t want her to be deported to her native Israel.

But then a month passed and not only had Halfon not returned the checks, two of them totaling $666,666 had been cashed in a city more than a thousand miles away.

Asked by investigators on Dec. 10 if he felt he was the victim of fraud and theft, Rappaport conceded.

"Yes," he replied.

Rappaport is president of Panther Medical, a Tampa-based company that distributes braces, electrotherapy devices and other medical equipment, records show.

Halfon doesn’t have much of a paper trail in the United States and does not have a prior criminal record in Florida. Where and when she and Rappaport met is unclear. He declined through his daughter Dayna Titus to comment for this story.

In February, Halfon and Rappaport attended a benefit for the Florida Holocaust Museum at the Vinoy Renaissance hotel in St. Petersburg. They posed arm-in-arm for a photograph published by the _Tampa Bay Times_.

Rappaport and Halfon got their marriage license in Hillsborough County about four months later, on June 24, records show. The license lists the date and location of the marriage as Aug. 21 at a county clerk’s office in Sarasota.

When investigators started asking questions last month, Titus told them that neither she nor anyone else in the family knew her father had married Halfon, according to the warrant affidavit.

"Titus believed that Halfon was 'conning' Rappaport due to his age," FDLE Special Agent Victoria Morris wrote in the affidavit.

When Amscot employees refused to cash the $1 million Wells Fargo cashier’s check on Nov. 7, Halfon offered to pay the company $100,000 to do the transaction, more than twice the company’s standard fee, the affidavit states.

When that didn’t work, she returned a few hours later with three checks, each for $333,333. Amscot employees again refused to cash the checks but made copies of them and Halfon’s Israeli passport, which she used as identification along with a U.S. visa. When asked about Rappaport’s whereabouts, Halfon said he was out of the country. An Amscot employee contacted authorities.

The next day, investigators interviewed Rappaport and Titus at his home. Rappaport said he believed it was a mistake and he’d asked Halfon to return the check. Titus told the investigators Halfon “berated Rappaport on the phone when he asked for the check back,” the affidavit states. The investigators told Rappaport that Halfon had broken the $1 million check into three checks.

On Nov. 12, investigators visited Halfon at her apartment, which the affidavit notes is different than Rappaport’s residence. Halfon told them she mailed the checks in a care package to her sister in Israel to hide them after she and Rappaport had a fight. She said Rappaport’s family had been pressuring him not to give her money and that she would ask her sister to mail back the checks.

"Halfon further advised that she does not work, and Rappaport pays all her expenses, like a normal married couple," the affidavit states.

About 20 minutes after the investigators left Halfon’s apartment, one of them got a call from Rappaport.

"Rappaport stated he appreciated the investigators' diligence, but that Halfon was going to give him back the checks," the affidavit says. "Rappaport stated that he did not want Halfon bothered or deported."

On Nov. 22, a man with an Orlando address cashed one of the $333,333 checks at a business called CheckPros in Carteret, N.J., according to the affidavit. Five days later, the same man cashed a second check for the same amount at the same place.

The _Tampa Bay Times_ is not publishing the man’s name because it is unclear if he has been charged in the case. Citing an active investigation, FDLE spokeswoman Jessica Cary said the department cannot answer any questions about the case.

Contacted by an investigator on Dec. 6, Rappaport said he’d made arrangements with Halfon to get the checks back the following week. Rappaport confirmed he’d never signed any of the three checks.

The next day, investigators got a warrant ordering Wells Fargo to freeze the third check.

On Dec. 10, investigators met with an Amscot branch manager who told them an unidentified male called on Nov. 7 asking if the company could cash a $1 million cashier’s check. The man, whom the manager described as young-sounding and outgoing, said his wife would bring the check to Amscot. Halfon showed up with the check an hour later, the affidavit states. The manager said she asked Halfon why she didn’t do a wire transfer instead and Halfon responded that there would be a hold on the check and she needed cash.

Investigators met with Rappaport again on Dec. 10. He said Halfon told him a friend was bringing the checks back from Israel but was landing in Boston, so Halfon was flying to New York on Dec. 15. He said he never called Amscot.

Morris asked Rappaport if he felt he was the victim of fraud and theft, and he said yes.

The next day, on Dec. 11, investigators learned that Halfon had changed her plans and flown to New York that morning. Morris secured the arrest warrant two days later, and police arrested Halfon on Dec. 16 at Tampa International Airport. Her home address listed in the jail log is a condo Rappaport owns in a tower on Bayshore Boulevard.

Halfon has hired Tampa attorney Todd Foster, who specializes in defendants accused of white-collar crime.

“There’s a valid marriage between this couple and we look forward to bringing forward additional facts to bring clarity to this situation,” Foster said.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime...mscot-leads-to-womans-arrest-authorities-say/


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## Crackers Phinn (Dec 27, 2019)




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## Crackers Phinn (Dec 27, 2019)

_The eyebrow-raising attempts sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in Halfon’s arrest last week on charges of money laundering, organized fraud and exploitation of an elderly person._

Where she messed up is that the checks were in both their names and she likely cashed it by forging his name.   Otherwise, the exploitation of an elderly person charge wouldn't have flyed/flied/flewed(sp?).


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## Theresamonet (Dec 27, 2019)

You can steal from your own husband with checks that have your name on them?? How? This is BS.


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## dicapr (Dec 27, 2019)

A 77 year old man knows a 26 year old woman is there for his money. Now he doesn’t want to pay up. He should have put a couple of million in her account to begin with and made monthly allowance payments to his rent a wife. He couldn’t be so full of himself that he didn’t know that the marriage was a pay to play arrangement.


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## Black Ambrosia (Dec 27, 2019)

He knew what was up when he married her but he thought he was in control. It became a problem when he found out she was going behind his back but his ego wouldn’t let him admit it was a problem. 

She could’ve gotten away with this if she played nice and fulfilled her wifely duties. That separate residence tells me all I need to know about their sex life.


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## Crackers Phinn (Dec 27, 2019)

Theresamonet said:


> You can steal from your own husband with checks that have your name on them?? How? This is BS.


It's both names being on the cashiers check that's the problem.  I'm guesstimating there was never a joint account.  Somebody signed his name on them checks along with her to get them cashed and that is a felony. 

Alladat and showing up at a random bank that the check isn't drawn on, where she don't have an account trying to cash (not deposit) a million dollar check was bound to raise all kinds of fraud concerns.


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## Chicoro (Dec 27, 2019)

Crackers Phinn said:


> It's both names being on the cashiers check that's the problem.  I'm guesstimating there was never a joint account.  Somebody signed his name on them checks along with her to get them cashed and that is a felony.
> 
> Alladat and showing up at a random bank that the check isn't drawn on, where she don't have an account trying to cash (not deposit) a million dollar check was bound to raise all kinds of fraud concerns.



Thanks for the excellent analysis.


A cautionary tale for current gold diggers, gold diggers in training and those who are yet to decide to be gold diggers:

Make sure your old man opens an account for you and that YOU need to deposit those checks in the same  bank in which you have that account. Do not try to cash them!

There are several gold nuggets of wisdom to be mined in this tale. Pun intended!

Love, sex and money make the world go 'round.


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## NijaG (Dec 27, 2019)

77 man vs 26 woman.

Like has been said, he knew what was up. However, she was not as smart as she thought. 

Anyway..... just one of the scenarios that highlights the disparity in the mating game for women that highlights the foolishness of worrying about male equality in the mating/dating game that I kinda hinted at on the other thread.


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## Brwnbeauti (Dec 27, 2019)

Crackers Phinn said:


>


He seems well preserved
She didn’t do that right.


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## Nay (Dec 29, 2019)

Maybe she would have succeeded if she wrote smaller checks and did it over time, the greedy cow


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## [email protected]@ (Dec 31, 2019)

Brwnbeauti said:


> He seems well preserved
> *She didn’t do that right*.





Nay said:


> Maybe she would have succeeded if she wrote smaller checks and did it over time, the *greedy cow*



Basically.


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## Iwanthealthyhair67 (Dec 31, 2019)

he looks good for 77


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## Crackers Phinn (Dec 31, 2019)

Chicoro said:


> Thanks for the excellent analysis.
> 
> 
> A cautionary tale for current gold diggers, gold diggers in training and those who are yet to decide to be gold diggers:
> ...


I forgot that this comment needed a little extra "dap" beyond a thanks for all of it's truth!


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## fluffyforever (Jan 1, 2020)

I wonder why she couldn’t get the cashier checks to be written in her name only. Is that a rule somewhere that a joint account can’t issue a cashier check to one of the named account holders?


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