Maple Grove Man Charged with Misappropriating Father's Money

A Maple Grove man pleaded not guilty this week in a North Dakota courtroom to misappropriating more than $45,000 of his father’s money.

Leo Sylvester Toay II, 47, is charged with misapplication of entrusted property, a felony with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Toay pleaded not guilty to the charge Monday in Grand Forks County District Court. A pretrial conference in the case is scheduled for May 17.

According to the criminal complaint, compiled by Grand Forks Police Cpl. Lindsay Wold, the administrator of a Grand Forks nursing home contacted authorities last November about Toay’s father, who lives in the nursing home and suffers from dementia.

Leo Toay Sr.’s wife had power of attorney for her husband until her death in December 2009, at which point his son assumed power of attorney and gained access to all of his bank accounts, the complaint says.

The nursing home administrator told authorities that he believed Toay had been mishandling his father’s money because his father had racked up more than $49,000 in unpaid bills, and Toay had applied for Medicaid on his father’s behalf.

Police received copies of the elder Toay’s bank statements and determined that $45,507 had been withdrawn from the accounts by his son and used for purposes that did not benefit him, according to the complaint.

The senior Toay’s bank account statements showed “numerous” transfers of money into Toay’s accounts, which were used to make payments to credit card companies and for a reserve line of credit, the complaint says.

Police subsequently interviewed Toay, who told them that before he was given power of attorney for his father, he was in debt because of an obsessive-compulsive disorder that causes him to “excessively shop,” according to the complaint.

Once the younger Toay assumed power of attorney, he used his father’s money to reduce his debt and buy more items, Wold’s account says. Toay “expressed remorse for taking his dad’s money and he said that he knew what he did was wrong,” the complaint says.