A San Jose man who was put in charge of a friend's finances while she entered a rehab program managed to spend every cent of an inheritance she had that was intended for the care of her mentally disabled mother.

The man, Vincent Robert Eppstein, 49, was a purveyor of bouncy houses and, according to court testimony, had little income of his own. All told, he embezzled over $630,000 from his friend, going so far as to empty an account of its last 60 cents via a check he wrote to himself with the memo, "Have a nice life." Such a terrific and life-affirming thing to find when you return from a long-term drug treatment program!

As prosecutor Victor Chen tells the Mercury-News, "He figured, who is going to believe her, she's a drug addict."

And Chen is especially pleased now that Eppstein was convicted this week on three counts of grand theft because he's the same creepy asshole who managed to evade conviction for a 2009 stalking incident involving his ex-wife.

In 2009, he had been found hiding in his ex-wife's garage with gloves, duct tape and rope after she'd left him and gotten a restraining order against him. The first jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of guilt; the second 11-1 in favor of innocence.

In the most recent six-week trial, the jury heard evidence of Eppstein's thievings that included the purchase of multiple vacations for himself to Las Vegas and Florida (of course), the payoff of his own mortgage, multiple Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Segway electric scooters, a Rolex watch, and a diamond engagement ring (for whom?). This was all over a four-year period, and Chen says they tallied all his expenditures on a 6,000-line spreadsheet.

Eppstein claimed innocence, but the prosecution used that check memo as proof that he knew exactly what he was doing all along — he transferred the victim's last $750, and wrote the 60-cent check, right after she confronted him about what he'd done.

[Mercury-News]
[Chron]