Sandra K. Reabuck
sreabuck@tribdem.com
EBENSBURG —
A 94-year-old Westmont woman testified in county court Monday that a man she trusted like a son had her write out checks directly to him rather than to home suppliers or stores so that he could get a contractor’s discount.
But sadly, she said that she learned in 2008 that Frank A. “Mousey” Solensky Jr. of Windber had betrayed that trust and bilked her out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for supplies never received or paid for at greatly inflated prices and for work that prosecutors are contending he had not done.
When she learned what he had done, the gray-haired, articulate woman, testifying from a wheelchair in the well of the courtroom, said, “I felt betrayed. I felt very badly. I always thought Frank was close to me. I’d introduce him as the son I never had. Even in the obit I had prepared, I had a mention of him. Of course, I’ve changed it.”
She depended on him to tell her what was needed at the house, she said.
“I had the greatest faith in him and believed everything he told me. Whatever he said we needed, I believed him,” she said.
Solensky, of the 1200 block of Somerset Avenue, is charged with 18 counts of theft by deception and one count of forgery for the $658,000 he allegedly obtained from her between 2000 and early 2008 when the deception was discovered by the woman’s daughter, a resident of California who was in Westmont visiting her mother.
Solensky was described as a contractor who formerly owned and operated a bar in Windber and who had at one time worked as a policeman.
He actually had pleaded guilty to some of the charges in the case, but later withdrew the plea, saying that he was innocent and wanted to go to trial.
The trial resumes this morning when prosecutors Wayne Langerholc and Michael Carbonara are expected to call two experts – an accountant who did a forensic audit of the woman’s bank accounts and checks, and a contractor who inspected her home to determine what work had been done to the house. David Murphy, a real estate appraiser, described it as a modest, three-bedroom house built in 1950 with a current value of $145,000.
Defense attorney Thomas Dickey of Altoona told the jurors Monday that Solensky will take the stand in his own defense.
The defense may open its case today.
Langerholc told the jury that Solensky had “exploited the victim and pillaged her bank accounts.”
“All of the checks have one common thread. All the checks were written to Frank Solensky. All the checks were cashed by Frank Solensky,” Langerholc said.
Dickey, however, said that his client had performed countless tasks for the woman.
He was the one she depended on, not her absent daughter in California nor her nephew in Pittsburgh.
Solensky first did work for the Westmont woman about 15 years ago when she said that she needed her furnace cleaned and he had been recommended by one of her friends. Through the years, he became a handyman and a part-time caregiver, driving her to doctor and hair appointments and taking her dog to the vet, according to Monday’s testimony.
The daughter said that the rip-off came to light in March 2008 when an attorney representing Solensky’s ex-wife, Joyce, wrote for information about what he had been paid by the Westmont woman because he was cooperative in the divorce battle. On the hundreds of checks written out to Solensky, the daughter said that her mother had made notations on the memo line for “wages” and “miscellaneous” – the two major items listed – and on some specific notations such as “porch,” “roof” and a few as “gift.”
The woman said that Solensky would come to her with white slips of paper on which he had written the hours he had worked for which he was paid $10 an hour.
Sometimes, it was for 80 or 90 hours in a week, she said.
“When I think about it (now), he didn’t work that long,” she said.
She said that she had kept the slips of paper together “in a great big envelope, and somehow it’s disappeared.”
Although she was unable to pinpoint any one item for which she had paid Solensky and had not received, prosecutors had her identify three checks – each for $3,360 with the notation for “cellar beams” within a five-day period in April 2008. Langerholc told the jury that those beams had never been purchased and installed in her cellar.
“I don’t even know what they are,” she admitted.
She now believes, she said, “Frank was interested in his bank, and I guess I was his bank.”
