Fraud May Cost Aide Her License
A nursing assistant who took out credit cards in the name of an 83-year-old Hospice patient and racked up almost $38,000 in debt may lose her Washington license to practice.
June Threlkeld, 54, used to run June’s Adult Family Home in Suncrest, where she cared for Edith Gina. Gina was breathing from an oxygen tank and could barely make it from her bedroom to the living room, even when she was in a wheelchair, her son-inlaw says.
But credit cards with Gina’s name on them piled up an impressive amount of merchandise.
“She got a sewing machine, horses, a lawn mower,” son-in-law John W. Carrico says. “You name it, she got it. She had a gas credit card and she couldn’t drive. It just went on and on.”
Threlkeld bought a pellet stove, Bengal cats and an Appaloosa horse with the credit cards, according to Stevens County court documents.
The nursing assistant, also known as Antonely Threlkeld and as June Whitten, couldn’t be reached for comment last week. She was sentenced to three months in jail last year after pleading guilty to first-degree theft in connection with the Gina case. She was also convicted of first-degree theft in Spokane County in 1991 in an unrelated case.
Her adult family home license was suspended in the fall of 1996. Now, the state Nursing Assistant Program of the Department of Health has charged Threlkeld with unprofessional conduct.
Threlkeld paid a $5 application fee and took a seven-hour training course in HIV and AIDS to receive her nursing assistant registration in October 1992.
The nursing program hasn’t been able to find Threlkeld to advise her of the action it is taking against her.
But her license can still be revoked, and her case is being prepared for default, says Jo Waidely, program manager. The state program receives an average of 124 complaints about nursing assistants every month.
“This was an unusual case,” Waidely says. “It was such a large amount of money.”
A Stevens County sheriff’s detective learned that Gina supposedly applied for 16 credit cards from January 1995 to September 1996.
Threlkeld admitted that she filled out pre-approved credit card applications addressed to Gina, criminal court papers said.
She was ordered to pay $500 to victim assessment, $110 in court costs and almost $38,000 in restitution.
Threlkeld allegedly charged more than $5,500 to an MBNA Mastercard, $1,500 to a Chase Manhattan Bank card, $9,400 to a Bank of New York card, $5,000 to a Providian Bankcorp card and $10,200 to a First Card Visa. She racked up $175 on a Chevron card, almost $2,600 on a Key Bank card, and more than $3,400 on a Fingerhut account.
Gina died in April after being placed in another adult family home.