Last Oct. 24, Janet Sterry died at a hospital in Palm Coast. She was 76. Last week, her 56-year-old son, John Frazzetto of White Star Drive in Palm Coast, was arrested on a felony charge of grand theft and a felony charge of fraud.
He’d faked his late mother’s signature on a series of checks in November and made a half dozen electronic transfers out of her bank account in October and November, allegedly stealing some $9,000 before family members got an alert from the bank: someone was attempting to cash a $51,200 check.
A Flagler County Sheriff’s investigation revealed that Frazzetto had written the checks to himself in increments of around $300 bearing his mother’s signature, and money transfers through Zelle, the app, in increments of $300 to $2,000. Frazzetto, who pleaded to selling cocaine in 2019 (adjudication was withheld, sparing him the designation of a felon), has had several drug arrests since 2018. He’d been living with his mother.
When detectives spoke with him in December, he said his mother would leave him a few signed checks to use if he was running errands and needed to pick up medicine or other things for her. He acknowledged that his aunt and his stepbrother were his mother’s estate executors, but said the only check he’d signed on his mother’s behalf was an $80 payment to the cleaning person.
The cleaning woman told detectives she never received the check. In fact, the check was deposited in Frazzetto’s account. Detectives obtained numerous additional records by subpoena, discovering that the day before Serry’s death, when she was incapacitated in the hospital, there’d been a $2,000 Zelle transfer from her account to Frazzetto’s.
The State Attorney’s office filed the two felony charges on June 9. Frazzetto was arrested on June 19 as a fugitive at the White Star address. He was booked at the Flagler County jail on $10,000 bond. He remains at the jail. His arraignment is scheduled for July 22. If he is convicted, he is no longer eligible to have his adjudication withheld.
