Diaz Torriente was arrested in 2023 by the State Attorney’s Office Elder and Vulnerable Adult Exploitation Task Force after a four-month investigation, according to reports.
A Miami-Dade man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for exploiting a 94-year-old woman by pretending to be her son, draining her finances and putting himself on the title to her house. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that Alejandro Diaz Torriente, 67, was convicted in the financial exploitation case and sentenced, according to a report filed by the NBC 6 website. He will be on probation for 10 years after his prison sentence. Diaz Torriente was arrested in 2023 by the State Attorney’s Office Elder and Vulnerable Adult Exploitation Task Force after a four-month investigation, according to reports. Authorities said the victim had been living alone in her El Portal home, which she bought in 1980. But in 2021 she was declared legally incompetent, leaving her especially vulnerable to financial exploitation.
Investigators said he began calling her “mom” and pretending to be her son during doctor’s visits and other interactions at some point. Diaz Torriente eventually took over the house and changed the locks, authorities said, further limiting the elderly woman’s access to her own home. “This case should serve as a warning to anyone who would try to exploit vulnerable older residents,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. “This case sends a clear message to those who seek to leave our elders destitute and discarded that we will not tolerate this type of heartless crime against our vulnerable residents,” Fernandez Rundle said in a statement Wednesday.
Diaz Torriente had known the woman as a friend. Authorities later found a trail of financial transactions and property records showing he had defrauded the elderly woman. Investigators found Diaz Torriente had filed a fraudulent deed adding himself as joint tenant with rights of survivorship on the woman’s El Portal property. The agreement would have afforded him substantial rights to the house and possibly entitled him to automatically inherit the property on the woman’s death. The case highlighted that elderly and vulnerable adults can be targeted not only for their savings but also for valuable property. Diaz Torriente will spend two decades in prison for the scheme and a decade on probation.