A former attorney who stole more than $169,000 from her elderly father was sentenced on Tuesday, to serve up to three years in a state correctional institution, the Bucks County District Attorney’s office said.
Diane L. Rohrman, 50, of Downingtown, Chester County, was convicted on Dec. 13, 2022, of theft, identity theft, access device fraud, and computer trespass. The verdict came following a three-day trial.
On Tuesday, Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Stephen A. Corr sentenced Rohrman to 1 ½ years to three years in state prison, followed by two years of probation. Additionally, he ordered her to pay $169,478.76 in restitution and have no direct or indirect contact with her 83-year-old father.
Before sentencing Rohrman, Corr heard victim impact statements from her father and two sisters, one who said that besides the theft of money, the “larger tragedy is our family was ripped apart.”
Rohrman’s father testified about the day he first discovered that his money was missing.
“I was completely stunned,” he said, adding that he could never have imagined that his daughter would be the one to take advantage of him. After his wife passed away, he designated Rohrman, his daughter and licensed attorney, to become his power of attorney in August 2016, so she could handle his finances for his care and benefits.
Instead, she stole money from him on an almost weekly basis, he said. “I haven’t slept right for the past three years,” he testified. “I think about it almost every night. How would you like your own daughter stealing from you every week. It doesn’t make sense. She manipulated me like I was a piece of dirt.”
At Tuesday’s sentencing, Deputy District Attorney Marc J. Furber explained how Rohrman used her role as power of attorney as a license to steal, utilizing “almost every possible method to steal money from her father.”
The investigation by Warminster Detective David Bonacquisti found that Rohrman wrote 134 checks to herself from her father’s accounts, totaling more than $92,000. She also wrote checks for thousands more that had nothing to do with her father or his care. In addition to the checks, Rohrman withdrew $35,645 in cash from two accounts belonging to her father.
She also used her father’s account to make more than $17,000 in payments to her father’s credit cards. The credit card records showed that Diane Rohrman was in fact using those credit cards to make thousands of dollars in purchases that were not for her father’s care or benefit.
Rohrman also took money from her father’s account using Zelle, made almost $7,400 in payments for her Verizon Wireless account and used the victim’s funds to make more than $12,000 in payments to her own credit accounts.
In August 2019, the victim and his oldest daughter walked into the Warminster Township Police Department to report that his other daughter nearly wiped out his life savings. On Tuesday, the oldest daughter, who is now serving as his power of attorney, said her father has not been the same since.
“He’s not the man he once was,” she said. “It’s not just that he lost my mother. It’s that he lost my mother and someone he cared about took advantage of him. He essentially lost his daughter.”
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