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By The Vanguard Staff
SACRAMENTO, CA – The family of an elderly woman—now dead—has been paid $1.75 million by Sacramento County in a lawsuit settlement after two Sacramento County Sheriff Dept. deputies allegedly “’took control’ of Achiu’s assets and bank accounts, then put her on a one-way flight to the Philippines,” according to a story in the Sacramento Bee last week.
Both deputies have been fired, but not criminally charged.
The 2020 Sacramento Superior Court lawsuit by Rosalie Achiu’s conservator claimed then-deputies Stephanie Angel and Joseph Martin Angel and Martin met Achiu responding to a welfare check call to her North Highlands home, wrote The Bee.
The suit alleged the pair moved her out of her home and into Angel’s residence, added The Bee, and then opened up a joint bank account with Achiu, withdrawing “several thousands” of dollars, and removed all the contents of her safe deposit box.
A few days later, the lawsuit said, Achiu’s home was put up for sale, Achiu’s belongings discarded, and an attorney “prepared a Durable Power of Attorney for Management of Property and Personal Affairs and an Advance Health Care Directive. It named Achiu as the principal, Angel as the principal agent, and Martin as a successor agent,” wrote The Bee.
Shortly thereafter, the deputies drove Achiu in their official patrol vehicle and put her on a one way flight to the Philippines, paid for by her own bank account, the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit added several days later, the U.S. Marshall Service located Achiu in the Philippines, and she said she did not know how she got there and that she wanted to return home to California.
The Bee wrote Deputy Angel who said she had “Achiu cleared by doctors and lawyers before sending her to the Philippines. She said she needed to have access to Achiu’s bank accounts so she could pay her bills on her house and buy her luggage.
“She had been trying to get back to her family for like two years,” Angel said. “…the doctor said she was fine to travel. She said, ‘I may come back in a month I may come back in two months.’ I didn’t want anything bad to happen so I wanted to make sure it was all on the up and up,” The Bee wrote.
The lawsuit claimed elder financial abuse, physical elder abuse, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and 14th Amendment Constitutional violations.
The Bee story quoted Angel claiming, “Rosalie’s attorney realized after that our intentions were pure of heart and the county is the one who made a mistake, not us. They portrayed us as these horrible officers. But they have no evidence of us doing anything wrong.”
The Bee reported Achiu died in January 2023, and the settlement agreement with her estate signed in March 2023.
Angel told The Bee both former deputies are still working as “civil servants,” but wouldn’t say what or where.
Angel also told The Bee she was fired in retaliation for a sexual harassment settlement she won about nine years prior against the SSO, alleging sexual harassment by a then-Sgt. Ramos Santos, no longer with the department, who allegedly sent her “sexually harassing text messages on his county cellphone.”
“I won a civil suit against the very people who initiated this (Achiu) investigation,” Angel told The Sacramento Bee.
