Why did Bonnie Sweeten flee?

Victor Biondino was no tycoon, just smart with money.

He toiled in a Bucks County steel mill, reared four children in a Levittown rancher, and lived frugally on his wife's pay as a meatwrapper. By saving and investing, he managed to retire with a tidy nest egg.

Biondino was 92 and struggling with dementia when nearly $300,000 of those savings were stolen, relatives say, by a trusted former in-law.

Her name: Bonnie Sweeten.

Sweeten, 38, of Feasterville, drew national attention May 26 by faking her own abduction and vanishing with her 9-year-old daughter in tow.

After an intense police dragnet and tearful appeals by loved ones on network news shows, the two turned up in a luxe resort at Walt Disney World in Florida.

Sweeten was charged with identity theft and false reports. She is scheduled for trial Thursday on the misdemeanor charges in Bucks County Court.

At the time, police and relatives said they did not know why the paralegal and mother of three had fled.

But Victor Biondino's loved ones had a strong hunch.

They and police had known for months, they now say, that Sweeten had swiped $280,000 from Biondino's Vanguard money-market retirement fund in December.

The relatives had demanded the cash back, threatening arrest. After months of excuses, they say, Sweeten wrote them a $285,000 check and bolted the day it bounced.

For the first time, Biondino's relatives are speaking publicly, frustrated that his money remains missing.

Backed by copies of checks, forged documents, and e-mails from Sweeten, they described events that preceded the abduction hoax and prompted a federal investigation into fraud and massive thefts.

"It is heartbreaking to me that a person I loved would do all of this," said Theresa MacCord, 61, of Trevose, a daughter with whom Biondino has lived since 2007.

Bonnie Sweeten, after all, was still considered family.

Where did the money go?

Sweeten is MacCord's former daughter-in-law - married for 10 years to Anthony Rakoczy, MacCord's son, until their 2003 divorce.

Despite the breakup, Sweeten had remained on good terms with her former in-laws. Good enough, they allege, for her to have covertly latched onto Biondino's blank Vanguard checks, possibly while house-sitting last fall.

Sweeten, they say, forged a $280,000 check from Biondino's retirement fund, then deposited the money on Dec. 29 into the trust account of attorney Debbie Carlitz, her longtime employer.

Carlitz had closed her Feasterville law office four months earlier, having been suspended from practicing in Pennsylvania.

When confronted, Sweeten admitted taking Biondino's money, his relatives said.

At first she claimed that she and Carlitz had been arrested and needed cash for bail. When that proved to be a lie, Sweeten said Biondino's money went to cover checks she wrote to law-firm clients who were owed civil damages in a sexual-assault case.

"She said the funds were distributed to clients of Debbie's whose money supposedly had been stolen," said Michelle McGovern, 38, of Newtown Square, Biondino's granddaughter.

Sweeten cast Carlitz as the thief, McGovern and MacCord said.

Carlitz, in turn, has accused Sweeten of stealing from her.

Neither has been charged with defrauding clients. But federal officials are pursuing what appears to be a complex probe involving allegations of forgery and thefts of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The investigation "involves many financial transactions which occurred at the Carlitz law office," said Sweeten's lawyer, Louis Busico, who declined to discuss specifics, including the allegations made by Biondino's family.

"Ms. Carlitz is a victim," said her attorney, Ellen C. Brotman, describing her as "shocked and devastated" by the actions of Sweeten, whom Carlitz saw as a close friend.

Carlitz "is doing her best to cooperate with the investigation, and to make sure any victims are identified and appropriately assisted," Brotman said.

Among the suspected forgeries is a bogus judge's order in a New Jersey case handled by Carlitz's firm, sources have told The Inquirer.

Also, Brotman has asked authorities to probe a $100,000 mortgage taken out in Carlitz's name in 2006 on her law office. Carlitz says her signature was forged on the documents - which list Sweeten's home as the billing address - and that she knew nothing of the loan until recently.

On Monday, a former client sued Carlitz in Bucks County Court, claiming her office stole his $100,000 settlement check from an auto accident. The man claims his signature was forged on the check before it was cashed last fall.

Federal authorities executed a search warrant at Sweeten's home on July 24, toting off boxes of undisclosed materials. And FBI agents have collected samples of Biondino's signature to analyze, MacCord and McGovern said.

The full scope of the probe, and where such hefty sums might have gone, has not been revealed.

"The part of this puzzle that I don't think anyone has figured out yet is: Where did this money go?" Busico said.

Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry has said the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia is spearheading the inquiry. Federal officials refused to confirm or deny the investigation, citing Justice Department policy.

And while Victor Biondino might not be the only victim, his losses could be among the steepest.

"If that money is not recovered," said his son, Patrick Biondino, 55, of Costa Mesa, Calif., "there is no way he will have the quality of life he should have."

A long delay

Quality of life is what two Bucks County mothers had in mind for their children when they hired Debbie Carlitz in 2003.

That year, Carlitz filed a lawsuit on their behalf in Ocean County, N.J. It sought damages from a man imprisoned for sexually assaulting the women's young daughters and another child at his Shore condo.

The families landed a sizable payout, ultimately at Victor Biondino's expense. Biondino's money appears to have covered two long-delayed checks that Sweeten wrote to the women Dec. 26 from the Carlitz firm's trust account.

The names of the victims and their mothers are not being published because of the nature of the crimes.

Their civil case ended on Oct. 16, 2007, when Ocean County Superior Court Judge Thomas O'Brien ordered the assailant's assets divided among the three victims. Each was to get $165,485.92, minus legal fees and costs.

After legal fees and costs, Carlitz's clients were to receive $117,537.27 each.The money soon was sent to the Carlitz firm, court officials said. But for 14 months, the families said, they received nothing.

During that span, Pennsylvania disciplinary officials were in the process of suspending Carlitz's state law license for practicing without proper credentials.

"Bonnie told us that she would be handling our case," said one of the mothers, who lives near Doylestown.

By September 2008, the anxious women began calling Sweeten about the long delay.

"She said there was some kind of holdup because they had lost some pieces of paper," said the Doylestown-area mother.

Allegedly missing, the mother said, were consent forms signed by the girls' fathers. But Ocean County records show the forms have been there since the fall of 2007.

Finally, as Christmas drew near, Sweeten called the mothers. Their money was ready.

At a Dec. 26 meeting, the women said, Sweeten wrote each of them a check for $115,344.88 from the Carlitz trust account. In interviews, both identified photocopies of the checks obtained by The Inquirer.

Neither knew that Sweeten had used Biondino's money to cover their checks.

And writing the checks directly to the mothers might have violated a court order.

Judge O'Brien had specified that the funds be placed into guardianships overseen by the Ocean County Surrogate's Office. The Carlitz firm failed to do so.

"By not depositing the money with the surrogate, they not only violated the judge's order, but they also violated the law," said Lewis April, a veteran Atlantic City lawyer who represented the third victim in the civil suit.

That was Carlitz's responsibility, April said: "She is on the hook for that."

But Carlitz, her lawyer said, never was told by Sweeten that the checks had arrived.

"We now believe that while Ms. Carlitz was waiting for the checks to arrive, they were stolen by her assistant," Brotman said. As office manager, Sweeten was allowed limited access to the firm's accounts, including the ability to make deposits and certain payments, she said.

Both mothers said they deposited the checks from Sweeten into interest-bearing bank accounts for their daughters, both of whom turn 18 this year.

Investigators have been probing a suspicious order, purportedly signed by Judge O'Brien, that authorizes withdrawals from one of those bank accounts.

A source familiar with the order said the bank ran a copy of it past O'Brien's office to confirm its validity and was told it was a fake. The document misstated the judge's title, and his signature was forged, the source said.

O'Brien, citing "pending issues," was unable to comment, his secretary said.

The mother whose account was named in the order confirmed that detectives had questioned her about it, but declined to elaborate.

The woman, who lives near New Hope, added that the check Sweeten wrote her in December had bounced. Not until several days passed did it clear, she said - as did the second mother's check.

Apparently, Victor Biondino's retirement money, needed to cover the payouts, had not been available yet when the first check hit.

According to a copy obtained by The Inquirer, the $280,000 check forged from Biondino's account was dated Dec. 26 - the day Sweeten met with the mothers.

But that sum was not deposited into the Carlitz account until Dec. 29, three days later.

Patrick Biondino said he sympathizes with the girls who were sexually assaulted but is angry that his father's money went to them.

Sweeten, he said, "stole from an old man to pay these girls."

Signs of trouble

A native of Ossining, N.Y., Victor Biondino came to Philadelphia in the 1940s.

There he married and worked as a crane operator, his son Patrick said, first on the shipping docks, then at the Budd Co.

Biondino moved on to the U.S. Steel plant in Fairless Hills, Bucks County. In 1953, he and his wife, Margaret, built a one-bathroom Levittown rancher for themselves and their four small children.

"He was a worker," Patrick Biondino said. "His goal, I think, was to show my mother a nice retirement so that she didn't have to worry."

Biondino took any available overtime, his son said. When the unions went on strike, Margaret pitched in by working as a meatwrapper at a Pantry Pride supermarket.

When Victor Biondino discovered that the family could scrape by on his wife's pay, he began investing his own earnings. By the late 1970s, he and Margaret bought a home in Port Richey, Fla., and retired there.

After Margaret died in 2001, Biondino moved to a retirement village south of Ocala. But by 2007 his mind was fading, and his children insisted he move in with - and have his finances managed by -MacCord, his eldest child and only daughter.

"He is very healthy," Patrick Biondino said. "But he has dementia."

As Victor Biondino settled in at MacCord's split-level house on Oak Avenue, Bonnie Sweeten was a frequent visitor there.

She had grown up a few blocks away. In 1992, she had married Rakoczy - MacCord's son. They had two daughters before divorcing.

She remarried in 2005, to Richard L. "Larry" Sweeten. They bought a $425,000 house less than a mile away and, last August, had a daughter via in vitro treatments.

She remained cordial with Rakoczy and close to MacCord. The children were a common bond, but MacCord saw Sweeten as a friend.

"We had a close relationship," she said. "We would go out to dinner, we would go to the holiday open houses."

So it raised no eyebrows last fall when Sweeten offered to watch the house for MacCord. The family was flying to California for Patrick Biondino's Sept. 6 wedding.

MacCord gave Sweeten a key, never thinking about Biondino's blank checks and statements inside.

On Dec. 2 came the first sign of trouble. MacCord was viewing Biondino's Vanguard account online and found three $10,000 deductions.

Each was a check cashed by Sweeten, made out to her and signed by Biondino.

MacCord called Sweeten, demanding an explanation. Sweeten claimed that Biondino had written the checks as gifts to her and his great-granddaughters, she said.

But Sweeten later repaid the money, MacCord said.

On Jan. 9 came a seismic jolt. While reviewing Biondino's account, MacCord discovered $280,000 missing.

"She called me in a panic," McGovern recalled. "I knew it had to be Bonnie."

MacCord agreed, and said she contacted Vanguard's fraud division that night. "I knew it couldn't be anyone else," she said.

Incensed, McGovern pushed her mother to call the police. "I wanted [Sweeten] arrested from minute one," McGovern said.

MacCord said Vanguard sent her fraud-reporting forms and urged her to file a police report.

But she held off. MacCord hated the thought of traumatizing her granddaughters by having their mother arrested.

First she wanted an explanation.

Excuses, lies

The next day, Jan. 10, MacCord said she called Sweeten, who, she said, admitted taking the money.

"She said she had been waiting to tell me that she had written this big check," MacCord said. "That's where the whole story about this fake assignment of bail came in."

Sweeten claimed to have been arrested, along with Carlitz, on felony theft charges. She told MacCord she had used Biondino's money to post their bail.

A Jan. 12 e-mail to MacCord from Sweeten's AOL account pledges a refinancing of her home to help repay Biondino. "[I]t may get me $160k - $190k in equity if I am lucky," the e-mail said.

To bolster her tale, MacCord and McGovern said, she fabricated documents and gave them to MacCord.

One was a signed letter, dated Jan. 13, that appeared to be from Jeffrey R. Solar, a lawyer in Feasterville.

The letter, addressed to Sweeten, said that Solar was awaiting information from police about the charges. It said that $283,000 in bail money would "be released to your Mother-In-Law, Theresa MacCord . . . upon final disposition" of the case.

Along with the letter, Sweeten gave MacCord three county bail documents, dated Dec. 26, stating that $283,000 was being held for MacCord until the criminal case concluded.

Solar had been Sweeten's lawyer in a 2007 civil suit over alleged defects in her new home. He had represented Carlitz in part of her state disciplinary proceedings. Sweeten had used his office for her Dec. 26 meeting with the Bucks County mothers, the women said.

But Sweeten's documents were fake. Michelle McGovern called Solar directly, and said he disavowed the letter or knowing of any criminal proceedings against Sweeten.

"She basically just made up all of this crap," McGovern said.

Contacted last week, Solar confirmed MacCord's and McGovern's version, but declined to comment further.

MacCord demanded a face-to-face meeting with Sweeten. On Jan. 16, she said, they met at Benny the Bum's, a restaurant on Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia.

"We sat down, and I told her, 'You'd better tell me the friggin' truth,' " MacCord said. "That's when she blamed the whole thing on Debbie."

Sweeten claimed Carlitz had threatened her, MacCord said. Sweeten told her that $600,000 was missing from the firm's accounts, she said, and that Carlitz was holding her responsible for half of it.

"She swore to me that she didn't steal a dime from the law practice," MacCord recalled. "She said Debbie had told her, 'Your name is on every one of those accounts. You are just as responsible as I am.' "

Sweeten pledged that her parents would refinance their home in Delaware to help replenish Biondino's account.

MacCord was skeptical.

"If you didn't steal anything, you'd have to be crazy to go out and steal from someone else," MacCord said. "I wasn't buying that story."

Still, MacCord saw it as her best shot at recovering the money.

"I knew that Bonnie was an only child, and that her parents would probably do anything to keep her out of jail," MacCord said. "This was probably the quickest and best way to get the money back - for them to go out and get a mortgage."

MacCord said she spoke by phone with Sweeten's father. She said William Siner, 66, of Milton, Del., agreed to help.

The McGoverns, who had wanted Sweeten arrested, also received a notarized fax, signed by Siner and sent from a bank office in Delaware.

"At this time I am scheduled to have my house appraised to acquire the necessary funds to resolve the situation," the fax stated.

Vanguard, meanwhile, had contacted police, MacCord said, and Bucks County detectives were soon on the case. By early March, MacCord said, she had spoken to a county detective who asked her to keep him posted but "wasn't pressing me" to prosecute.

Two more months passed. By May, Sweeten still hadn't delivered.

She had never refinanced her house. She had claimed, by late February, that her father had secured a loan, but it kept being delayed.

All the while, Sweeten e-mailed updates to MacCord, McGovern, and her ex-husband, Rakoczy:

Feb. 24: "My dad said we should receive the committment paper and the closing date late today or tomorrow morning."

March 30: "I want this over so bad to. i deserve anything that happens to me as the result of this but the girls do not . . ."

April 13: "my dad left me a voicemail - settlement is friday 1:45pm"

But still no check.

"She knew how to play me," MacCord said. When pressed, Sweeten would concoct a personal crisis - a medical condition involving her father; a problem with her kids - that "would make me back off."

On April 30, MacCord and McGovern left with Biondino on a trip to Italy, assured by Sweeten that a check would be waiting for them upon their return on May 13.

And it was. But the check, for $285,000, was postdated to May 18.

When May 18 arrived, Sweeten e-mailed MacCord that "the funds have not all cleared" in her account, and that MacCord should hold off on depositing the check.

"I more or less felt at that point that I was in trouble," MacCord said.

Exasperated, McGovern gave her former sister-in-law an ultimatum.

"I finally told her, 'I'm giving you 48 hours. If that money is not back, I'm going to have you arrested,' " she said.

The next afternoon, May 19, Sweeten sent MacCord another e-mail. "I just went online," it said, and "enough will be cleared so you can deposit it into your acct."

On Thursday, May 21 - just before the three-day Memorial Day weekend - MacCord made the $285,000 deposit.

But on Tuesday, May 26 - the third business day after the deposit - the check bounced.

And Bonnie Sweeten was headed for Disney World.

A call to 911

For four days, police say, she had been gathering cash.

Beginning May 22, police say, Sweeten withdrew $12,200 from bank accounts belonging to her and undisclosed family members.

She then secured an alias.

On May 26, Sweeten borrowed the driver's license of a former coworker at the Carlitz firm, pretending to need it to roll over the woman's 401(k) account, police said.

Her bizarre abduction hoax was about to begin.

At 1:45 p.m., Sweeten called a Philadelphia police 911 operator from her cell phone.

She told the operator that she and her daughter, 9-year-old Julia Rakoczy, had been rear-ended and carjacked by two black men in a Cadillac on busy Street Road. She said she was calling from inside the trunk, court records say.

Sweeten then left a tearful voicemail on her husband's cell phone. She repeated her story, adding that "if she didn't see him again, to tell the children that she loved them," court records say.

MacCord said she knew nothing about Sweeten's disappearance until her son Anthony Rakoczy - Julia's father and Sweeten's ex-husband - called her.

" 'Did that check clear?' " she remembered Rakoczy asking. She told him it had not.

" 'Well,' " he continued, " 'here's what's going on . . . .' "

Hoax revealed

The hoax unraveled quickly enough, but not before alarming millions of people.

The evening she vanished, law enforcement officials issued an Amber Alert that repeated Sweeten's abduction story on radio, TV, and regional highway message boards.

The national media pounced. By the next morning, a tearful Anthony Rakoczy appeared on NBC's Today show, pleading for the return of his ex-wife and daughter.

In the interview with Today's Natalie Morales, Rakoczy said nothing of the theft allegations, the bad check, or anything else that would cast doubt on the abduction story.

"I'm still in shock," he said.

"If you could say something to the abductors, what is it you would like to tell them?" Morales asked.

"I would like to tell them to let them go," Rakoczy said, weeping. "I don't understand why they would want to keep them."

He knew better, MacCord said, but feared for his daughter.

"He was trying to do what he could to get Julia back," she said. "He had an idea of what was going on, but this man was stressed. He was a basket case."

Sweeten had earlier hinted at suicide, MacCord said, adding to the family's fears.

"You never know what might happen in a situation like this," she said. "Right after this happened in January, she told me that she thought she would be better off dead, and that we would all be better off without her."

Even as the kidnapping tale went national, police were well en route to debunking it.

Within hours, police had traced Sweeten's 911 call to Center City, not lower Bucks County.

At 1:30 a.m., May 27, a Philadelphia police officer had found Sweeten's SUV parked in the 1500 block of Chestnut Street. A parking ticket showed it had been there since at least 2:24 p.m. the day before.

The FBI learned that the ID of Sweeten's coworker had been used to buy two 4:15 p.m. flights to Orlando from Philadelphia International Airport. Surveillance photos showed Sweeten and her daughter passing through airport security.

By nightfall on May 27, police sources had assured MacCord and her family that Sweeten and Julia were in Florida and would soon be in custody.

The family waited for updates at the Upper Southampton police station with Sweeten's husband, Larry.

They told him none of the backstory, MacCord said, certain that he had not been involved in the thefts.

The following day, after Bonnie Sweeten's arrest, the rejected $285,000 check arrived in Larry Sweeten's mail.

"I was outside the next day when he came to my house with the bounced check," MacCord recalled.

"He said, 'Why didn't anyone tell me?' "

Laying the blame

Bonnie Sweeten's trial for identity theft and false reports is set for Thursday in Bucks County Court.

Where the larger investigation stands is anyone's guess.

Since her arrest, Sweeten has been free on 10 percent of $1 million bail. She has undergone mental-health treatment, said her lawyer, Busico. She is not allowed to be with her children unless another adult is present.

"There was no legitimate purpose in concocting the hoax," Busico said. "She was not in her right frame of mind. Her affliction amounted to severe depression and a mental meltdown."

Her husband has filed for divorce. Their dream home in Feasterville is for sale, listed at $479,900.

Victor Biondino's relatives have hired a lawyer to recover his money. But none of them has a clue - if, indeed, Sweeten did steal such large sums from the law firm - where it all could have gone.

Her in vitro treatments had cost no more than $50,000, they say. No one knew her to have a substance-abuse or gambling problem.

Her parents had provided the down payment on her house, MacCord said. The mortgage is more than $400,000.

"I'm thinking: If you have all this money that you've taken, where is it?" MacCord said. "What has happened here?"

McGovern said that she believes Carlitz and the banks her firm used bear some responsibility. Anyone reasonably monitoring those accounts should have seen red flags, she said.

As for Victor Biondino, he remains in MacCord's home, shielded by his fading mind from the maelstrom surrounding his nest egg.

"My aim is to get my grandpop's money back," McGovern said. "And I'm looking for where to lay the blame."

Contact staff writer Larry King at 215-345-0446 or lking@phillynews.com.