Elder Abuse and Financial Fraud Case Ends in Probation for Two

The elder fraud and abuse case against Wendy Jane Foster and Erica Salda came to a close on June 12 with a plea bargain in which Salda agreed to return $250,000 to the estate of Elizabeth Whitney, who died in 2018 at the age of 102. Foster had reached a similar agreement in November 2022. The case was a complicated one in which Foster, who was a trustee for one of Whitney’s trusts, worked with Salda to use Whitney’s money to buy annuities, pocket the commission, then employ a method sometimes known as “twisting and churning” to place the funds back into other annuities for Whitney. The practice continued for nine years and only came to an end when Whitney complained to her family in 2015 that her former “friends” were untrustworthy. 

Read the entire news article.  Santa Barbara Independent, by Jean Yamamura, June 15, 2023 

NICB assisted the investigation.