Man kidnaps woman with dementia from hospital and steals thousands from her, feds say
A man kidnapped a 68-year-old woman with dementia outside a Los Angeles veterans hospital after she tried to make a medical appointment with her friend, federal prosecutors said.
More than two years later, Johnny Ray Gasca — who prosecutors said abducted the woman to steal her money and called her a “golden goose” — has been sentenced to over two decades in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
The morning of July 19, 2021, Gasca suddenly showed up as the woman and her friend headed to their car at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center, prosecutors said.
He grabbed the woman, pushed her toward a gold pickup truck, threw her inside the vehicle, then took her to a bank, where she withdrew $15,000, according to court documents.
FBI agents ultimately traced the woman’s phone to a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, where Gasca walked out with the woman and he was arrested, prosecutors said.
The woman’s friend later told FBI agents “she recognized Gasca, believed he previously was in some kind of relationship” with the woman and suspected he had stolen money out of her bank and retirement accounts, prosecutors said.
In an interview with FBI agents, Gasca called the woman his girlfriend, according to prosecutors.
Prior to the kidnapping, the woman couldn’t find her credit cards — leading her friend to discover $35,000 was withdrawn from her retirement account, according to court documents.
The friend also saw the woman had made online transactions over Venmo, MoneyGram and PayPal that the friend believed the woman had no knowledge of when the pair took a look at her accounts, prosecutors said.
On Nov. 29, a judge sentenced Gasca, of New York City, to 25 years and 10 months in prison on one count of kidnapping, two counts of attempted obstruction of justice and one count of attempted witness tampering, the attorney’s office announced in a news release that day.
“(Gasca) financially exploited (the) victim’s mental fragility — describing his supposed ‘girlfriend’ as ‘senile’… — to steal tens of thousands of dollars from her,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Gasca represented himself in the case, attorney Mark Chambers, his advisory counsel, told McClatchy News in a statement on Dec. 1. Chambers didn’t provide a comment when contacted.
While detained, Gasca called a friend in New York and tried convincing him to “destroy evidence” relevant to the case – including deleting Facebook Messenger messages and collecting his hard drives to prevent the FBI from obtaining them, prosecutors said.
He didn’t want agents to discover he financially exploited the woman, according to prosecutors.
In the sentencing memo, prosecutors said after the woman “managed to get away from (Gasca), he abducted her from the grounds of a hospital where she had sought care for her dementia, in order to steal even more of her money. Immediately after the abduction, he attempted to indoctrinate her to parrot back a version of events favorable to him.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2023 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Man kidnaps woman with dementia from hospital and steals thousands from her, feds say."
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