A house cleaner in Alabama is accused of helping herself to “handfuls” of an elderly couple’s cash over a period of months, allegedly taking nearly $400,000 before the missing money was noticed.
And if investigators are right about where some of that cash went, this was not exactly a low-profile spending spree.
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office says deputies found new appliances, four-wheelers, lawn equipment, electronics, vehicles and construction supplies while investigating 28-year-old Tabitha White of Bay Minette.
White has been charged with financial exploitation of an elderly person.
The Couple Noticed Their Cash Was Disappearing
The investigation began after the elderly couple realized a substantial amount of cash was missing from their Bay Minette home and contacted authorities.
According to FOX10, the victims reported the missing money on Aug. 25 and identified White, who cleaned their home, as the primary suspect.
Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Andy Ashton told the station that investigators contacted White and began questioning her.
White initially produced a large amount of money from her house that she said had come from the couple’s home, Ashton said.
But investigators kept digging.
Authorities say White subsequently admitted taking “handfuls” of cash while cleaning the residence over several months.
The total allegedly taken was nearly $400,000.
Then Investigators Started Looking At The Purchases
A search warrant executed at White’s property turned up considerably more than cash.
Investigators told FOX10 they seized purchase records along with vehicles, four-wheelers, electronics, lawn equipment and construction supplies.
Ashton also described detectives finding new appliances, a four-wheeler and lawn mowers.
That list got viewers doing some informal accounting.
“$400k is a lot of money to spend on lawnmowers, four wheelers and a stove,” one commenter wrote.
Fair point.
Four hundred thousand dollars buys a truly heroic amount of yard maintenance.
But investigators have not publicly said that every dollar allegedly missing was spent, that everything seized was purchased with the couple’s money, or how much of the money has actually been recovered.
Those details matter if prosecutors eventually try to trace the alleged proceeds and determine what property may be connected to the case.
Viewers Had One Very Obvious Question
A sizable portion of the reaction focused not on White, but on the fact that anyone apparently had close to $400,000 in physical cash sitting inside a house.
“I need 400 thousand dollars laying around,” one viewer wrote.
Another was more direct: “$400k in cash in the house. Thats waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past insane.”
Others immediately asked why the money had not been placed in a safe or deposited at a bank.
That is a reasonable question about risk. It is not an explanation for the alleged theft.
Someone being able to reach property does not give them permission to take it, and the criminal allegation here concerns what White allegedly did with money belonging to the couple.
But storing hundreds of thousands of dollars in physical cash does create risks that a bank deposit does not.
Cash sitting in a residence can be stolen, lost or destroyed. And unlike qualifying money deposited at an insured bank, the bills themselves do not receive federal deposit insurance simply because someone owns them.
One commenter claimed that a bank savings account is “guaranteed to $250,000,” which is close enough to the general idea but misses an important detail.
The FDIC says its standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.
Depending on how accounts are owned and structured, a depositor can therefore have more than $250,000 protected at the same institution.
Why The Charge Is More Serious Than Ordinary Theft
White is accused specifically of financially exploiting elderly victims.
Under Alabama law, financial exploitation of an elderly person becomes first-degree financial exploitation when the property involved exceeds $2,500.
It is a Class B felony.
Alabama defines an elderly person for purposes of that law as someone 60 or older. The statute covers obtaining unauthorized control over an elderly person’s property through methods including deception, intimidation, undue influence, force or threats, as well as certain breaches of fiduciary duty.
The roughly $400,000 alleged in White’s case is therefore not hovering anywhere near the statutory threshold. It is more than 150 times it.
Prosecutors would still have to prove the charge in court. An accusation, an arrest and statements attributed to a suspect during an investigation are not a conviction.
“It’s Shameful”
For Ashton, the troubling part of the allegation was not simply the dollar amount.
“These cases are difficult,” he told FOX10 while discussing elderly victims and the financial resources they may depend upon later in life.
He described taking advantage of people in that position as “shameful.”
The broader numbers help explain the concern.
AARP Alabama told FOX10 that financial exploitation costs older Americans billions of dollars.
There is no single dataset that captures every form of elder financial exploitation, but recent federal figures show how enormous even one slice of the problem has become.
The FBI reported that people over 60 submitted more than 201,000 complaints to its Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2025, reporting more than $7.7 billion in losses.
Those figures concern internet-related complaints, not cases like the alleged in-home theft in Bay Minette, so they are not directly comparable. They do show how frequently older Americans are losing very large amounts of money to people accused of exploiting their trust.
“She Was Released?”
Another detail quickly took over the comments after viewers learned that White was no longer in jail.
“She was released?????” one person wrote.
“Out already on the streets again,” another said.
FOX10 reported that Baldwin County jail records showed White had been released.
That does not mean the criminal case disappeared.
Release from jail while a case is pending is separate from whether a defendant is ultimately convicted, acquitted or has the charge dismissed. FOX10 reported that White’s court date was not yet clear.
The sheriff’s office has also said the investigation remains ongoing and that White could face additional charges.
Several commenters had another proposal: sell whatever investigators can prove was bought with the allegedly stolen money and return the proceeds to the victims.
Whether any particular seized item can ultimately be forfeited, sold or used to make the couple whole will depend on what investigators can establish about the money and purchases, as well as what happens in the criminal case.
For now, White is accused of exploiting the access that came with being trusted inside an elderly couple’s home.
And somewhere in Baldwin County, investigators are apparently trying to reconstruct how nearly $400,000 allegedly went from handfuls of cash to a collection that included four-wheelers, lawn mowers, electronics and major appliances.