Police charge woman posing as nanny for theft, cruelty to child

Police in California recently arrested a woman they say had been falsely posing as a nanny. She is charged with identity theft as well as cruelty to a child by inflicting injury. Police say this is not her first encounter with the law nor her first time being accused of pretending to be a nanny.

Authorities believe that the woman initially posed as a mother seeking care for her own children in order to interview various nannies. During the interviews, she reportedly collected the nannies’ personal information, which she said she would use to verify their credentials. Instead, she took the information and provided it to other families when she interviewed to be a nanny. The information would make it appear as if she had cleared various criminal background checks in the state of California.

A family who was hoping to hire the woman as their nanny alerted authorities when they discovered that the credentials she gave them matched a different person. This led to the charges for identity theft. It is unclear whether the cruelty to a child charge is related to the family who discovered the credential discrepancy or from a different nanny job. The incident happened in 2018, when she reportedly let a 2-month-old infant cry for long periods of time and also laid him down forcefully in a crib.

Charges for theft can be quite serious, especially when defendants are also facing additional criminal allegations. Depending on the situation, a person might face significant jail time or have to pay hefty fines. This is why California defendants often choose to perform a thorough review of all criminal charges as early on in the process as possible, many of whom do so alongside an experienced attorney.