Man sentenced to 20 years in prison for financially exploiting 94-year-old woman

A man was sentenced on Wednesday to 20 years in prison for financially exploiting a 94-year-old El Portal woman, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said.

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Alejandro Diaz Torriente, 67, inserted himself into the incapacitated woman’s life to take her money and her property, according to a 2023 arrest affidavit. She was vulnerable because of physical and mental limitations and “infirmities of aging.”

“This case sends a clear message to those who seek to leave our elders destitute and discarded that we will not tolerate this type of heartless crime against our vulnerable residents,” State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in her office’s statement.

Torriente was an acquaintance of the victim, the affidavit said. He started visiting her more during the COVID-19 pandemic and began manipulating her by referring to her as “mom” and representing himself as her son to her doctors.

Torriente moved in to the woman’s home and started posing as her caregiver, according to the affidavit. He eventually listed himself as a joint tenant with rights of survivorship on her property, which was worth no less than $625,000.

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Torriente continued his scheme by transferring thousands of dollars of her money into his own account, the affidavit said.

When a state attorney’s office investigator visited the woman’s home in November 2023, the inside was dirty, “as if no efforts had been made to clean and care” for her, the affidavit said.

Torriente will serve 10 years of probation after his prison sentence, according to Rundle. His public defender didn’t immediately respond Thursday to a request for comments.

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