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Charges: Con artists impersonated rich Africans to bilk women
Prosecutors say pair suspected in string of parking lot confidence scams targeting older shoppers
By LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Published 6:59 pm, Thursday, September 15, 2016



Two Seattle women accused of fleecing older shoppers at area supermarkets now face theft charges.
King County prosecutors claim Beatrice Holbert and Carolyn Kinniebrew conned Asian-American women shopping at Western Washington stores. The women are described as veteran con artists previously caught bamboozling elderly shoppers into extending them large cash loans.
Writing in court papers, a King County Sheriff’s Office detective said the women bilked an 85-year-old Chinese-American woman at a Bellevue Home Depot.
The elderly woman was loading flowers into her car on July 23, 2015, when Kinniebrew, 66, approached her and claimed she recently arrived from Africa.
Using a scam she was convicted of employing five years before, Kinniebrew said she was due a large inheritance but needed thousands of dollars to obtain it, the detective said in charging papers. Kinniebrew is alleged to have offered the woman payment in exchange for a $10,000 cash “loan.”
If the scam sounds familiar, that’s because it is a real-life version of the Nigerian gold scam once popular online. A small payment now, the con artists claimed, would net a large return later.
Kinniebrew convinced the woman to drive her to a Denny’s in neighboring Newcastle, where Holbert, 56, met them. Kinniebrew is alleged to have told the woman she needed two Americans to help distribute her fortune to charities. She then convinced the woman to drive to a nearby Bank of America branch.
According to charging papers, Holbert pretended to withdraw $30,000 from the bank. Holbert and Kinniebrew are alleged to have then pressured the older woman into emptying her savings, withdrawing $10,000.
Holbert and Kinniebrew were standing outside the woman’s car when she returned with the money and handed it to Holbert, the detective told the court. Kinniebrew suggested the older woman drive around the parking lot – carrying a bag she believed held $30,000 – to show she was trustworthy.
When the woman returned, Holbert, Kinniebrew and her $10,000 were gone, according to the detective’s account.
Around the same time, Newcastle police received a report that someone was “casing” cars in a nearby parking lot. A car involved in that incident had been rented by Kinniebrew under another name she uses, Carolyn Bilal.
The elderly woman later picked Kinniebrew out of a photographic lineup. She and Holbert remain suspects in two other confidence scams committed in 2015.
In court papers, the detective said the incident left the elderly woman ashamed and in fear.
She “told me that she is now afraid of people and embarrassed that she is a victim of this scam,” the detective said in charging papers. She “is afraid to tell her daughter about what happened as she feels that her daughter would feel she is unable to care for herself.”
Holbert is also accused of bilking a woman outside a Covington Costco on May 12.
Investigators contend she donned “African-style dress” and a round straw hat to pose as a rich African due a $2.5 million inheritance who recently arrived in Seattle. Holbert is alleged to have flashed two large rolls of cash at the woman and asked her to suggest charities where the money could be donated.
The woman offered to drive Holbert to her church to donate the money. Once there, a man – an apparent accomplice in the scheme – walked up to the car and urged the woman not to donate the money.
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Holbert and the man then came to an arrangement that he could keep a portion of her $50,000 “donation” if he held on to the money overnight. Holbert is alleged to have offered the woman a similar arrangement if the woman provided $3,000 to prove she was trustworthy.
The woman withdrew the $3,000, and provided it to Holbert for a “trust test” that ended with Holbert leaving the area, the detective said.
Holbert and Kinniebrew are described as veteran thieves. Each has previously been convicted in similar cons.
Writing the court, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Page Ulrey said Holbert has been exploiting older people for decades.
Holbert was caught pickpocketing a 70-year-old woman in 1985. Since then, she has been caught stealing from at least 21 other people and cumulatively sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.
An investigation into Kinniebrew’s past conduct is ongoing. She was convicted in 1998 on theft charges related to a confidence scheme that saw her pocket donations she fraudulently claimed would go to a Baptist church.
More recently, she was caught in 2009 after persuading a woman to give her $50,000. Putting herself forward as a wealthy African recently arrived in the United States, she offered the woman $20,000 in exchange for the loan.
Sentenced to three months in jail, Kinniebrew was back at it the next year. Ulrey said in charging papers that Kinniebrew and an accomplice pulled the same scam in 2010, taking $60,000 from another Asian immigrant to the United States.
“The defendant, speaking in a heavy African accent, again approached the victim in public, told her she had inherited $9 million and showed her a letter to that effect,” Ulrey said in charging papers.
Having garnered five felony theft convictions, Kinniebrew has 21 known aliases. Holbert has 10 felony theft convictions and has gone by at least 29 names.
Kinniebrew and Holbert have been charged with first-degree theft. Holbert is separately charged with second-degree theft. Neither is currently jailed.