Financial 'advisor' stole millions from ailing Highland Beach couple

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WEST PALM Seashore — Five decades just after police located an elderly Highland widow stabbed to dying in her bedroom, someone near to her has absent to jail — but not for the murder.

David Del Rio, 39, little by little emptied the bank accounts of Betty and Billy Cabral all through his tenure as their self-appointed “monetary adviser,” stealing thousands and thousands to invest on household improvements, cruise tickets, automobiles and $50,000 worthy of of firearms and silencers for himself and his household, detectives stated.

The Lee County man’s crimes arrived to mild over the class of an investigation into Betty Cabral’s murder, which stays open. It can be thought to be a person of two murders in the 74-year record of Highland Seashore, an oceanfront city involving Boca Raton and Delray Seashore.

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Del Rio preserved a plea of not guilty until eventually the eve of his trial, which was slated to commence this thirty day period. He faced 75 counts punishable by extra than 1,000 several years in prison, but earned a fraction of the penalty many thanks to a plea offer negotiated by protection legal professional Michael Salnick and Assistant Condition Attorney Aleathea McRoberts.

Cabral’s family agreed to the resolution but wished the worst for Del Rio when presented a opportunity to converse at his sentencing listening to March 2, Salnick said. Circuit Choose Jeffrey Gillen sentenced Del Rio to 15 many years in jail and 15 decades of probation soon after that.

Aged couple named financial adviser their sole beneficiary

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Business office investigators said Betty and Billy Cabral moved to Palm Seashore County from Boston in 1996 and retired to Highland Seaside in 2012. They fulfilled Del Rio at a bank the place they transferred their wealth, accrued over a life time of frugal paying out and astute investments. He embedded himself in their life, investigators claimed, earning their belief right before exploiting it.

Del Rio, then 31, started siphoning dollars from their accounts in 2014 — the yr Billy Cabral’s doctor diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s sickness. His problem worsened speedily.

By 2015, when Cabral could no for a longer time bear in mind to clean his hands or brush his tooth, he and his spouse named Del Rio their sole beneficiary. Salnick mentioned he was like a son to the Cabrals, who experienced no small children of their have but held a photo of Del Rio’s in their home.

A previous nurse for the Cabrals and close friends of Del Rio testified in 2018 that he was more than a fiduciary to the couple — he was a near personalized friend. He crossed the line, mentioned then-Assistant Point out Attorney Brian Fernandes, violating the few in what really should have been their “golden years” and stripping them of their lifestyle savings.

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Economical adviser wrote checks in Billy Cabral’s title even immediately after Cabral died

Del Rio continued to write checks to himself in Billy Cabral’s name a year the 88-year-old man’s death in 2017. Betty Cabral and her household mentioned her “unexplained dwindling monies,” investigators wrote, but hardly ever claimed it to authorities.

A welfare check on 85-12 months-old Betty Cabral on April 18, 2018, led Highland Beach Police to the bed room of her fifth-ground condominium, exactly where they observed her stabbed to demise. They identified her car or truck, stolen and deserted with the keys within, west of Pompano Seaside.