Nebraska football public address announcer Patrick Combs was charged earlier this week in Lincoln, NE with stealing a small fortune from two elderly women, as the Lincoln Journal-Standard’s Riley Johnson reports :
Combs, Memorial Stadium’s public-address announcer for Husker football since 2002, allegedly used his power of attorney status with two Lincoln women, ages 88 and 92, to bilk them out of more than $363,000, Lincoln Police Investigator Cindy Koenig-Warnke said in court documents.
The bulk of the money came from the accounts of Beverly J. Mosher, an 88-year-old widow and longtime University of Nebraska-Lincoln employee who had dementia, the investigator wrote in an affidavit. Combs was a friend of hers.
Combs used Mosher’s checking account between September 2014 and January 2015 to buy cars, pay off a car loan and credit cards, install carpet at his lake house and get brickwork done on an outbuilding at his Gretna home, Koenig-Warnke said.
Combs also gifted $150,000 and $100,000 to two of his family friends after having Mosher’s power of attorney amended to allow gifting, an affidavit to arrest him states.
Earlier this year, a $1.75 million transfer from Mosher’s account to Combs was frozen and not completed after investigators learned of the possible financial exploitation from Adult Protective Services — a state agency.