St. Louis County man's fraud on elderly women netted a car, a home, thousands of dollars (2024)

ST. LOUIS — About six months before A.B. died, a friend came to visit her house in St. Louis County.

The friend, Loretta Pritt, found a distressing scene: mounds of boxes and plastic; dust covering some floors; half-finished renovation projects.

“I wanted to sit down and cry,” Pritt said Thursday in federal court. “It was horrible.”

A.B., in her 80s, paid nearly $761,000 over the course of two years to Gino Rives and his friends for renovations on her 1,100-square-foot home. Rives pledged to repair the roof and ceiling and to fix termite damage, structural beams and the foundation.

But very little work was actually done. And A.B., who was referenced in court only by her initials, eventually realized Rives was taking advantage of her.

“I guess I was lonely,” Pritt said A.B. told her.

Rives appeared in court Thursday for a sentencing hearing in which he expressed remorse for his actions. He said A.B. was a “wonderful woman” who was a friend to him in tough times.

“She helped every single person who came into her life,” he said.

But A.B. was not the first person Rives took advantage of. Last year, he claimed to be repairing the home of a woman in her 90s before eventually checking her into a nursing home, taking the home and renting it out to his mother.

Rives and his mother also spent more than a decade falsely claiming to the Social Security Administration’s Supplemental Security Income Program that he had mental disabilities and little or no income, federal prosecutors say.

“This family, it appears from the record, is about gaming the system and gaming others,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Berry said in court Thursday.

Rives’ first conviction came in 2009, after he met a man in a Schnucks’ parking lot in St. Louis and told him he could fix his car. Rives received $5,000 but had no intention of fixing anything, police wrote in a report. He eventually pleaded guilty to financial exploitation of the elderly and was sentenced to probation.

Five years later, he was accused of exploiting a 77-year-old St. Louis man. Court documents say Rives approached the man’s home and offered to perform repairs. Later, when the man couldn’t pay, Rives drove him to car dealerships and tried to convince him to buy Rives a car in exchange for the repairs, police said.

‘Turned her life upside down’

Rives met A.B. during the COVID-19 pandemic. But even after people began to gather again, Pritt noticed her friend would frequently cancel visits at the last minute.

A.B. told her about Rives and the home repairs, and Pritt warned her that he was charging too much.

“I thought it was ridiculous,” Pritt said.

In November 2022, Pritt visited her friend’s home and noticed it was in bad shape. She rushed to the hospital months later when A.B. suffered a medical emergency.

Her friend didn’t look like herself, Pritt recalled. A.B. was confused on some days and lucid on others, but at one point she acknowledged that Rives was a “crook.”

Meanwhile, on March 29, 2023, Rives used A.B.’s debit card to buy three round-trip tickets to Arizona for him and his family.

A.B. died a week later.

It took multiple people about a month to clean out A.B.’s house, sift through paperwork and throw out soiled clothes, Pritt said. Holes remained in the ceiling and garbage was everywhere.

Six years earlier, Rives had met another woman, M.P., and was supposedly doing repairs on her south St. Louis County home. She gave him her late husband’s car as payment.

Then, in January 2023, M.P. ended up in the hospital. Rives claimed to have power of attorney and checked her into a nursing home.

He left her there with two nightgowns, two sets of clothing, socks and underwear.

“It wasn’t enough,” Jennifer Whalen, business manager of the nursing home, said in court Thursday.

Staff members pooled money to buy M.P. more clothes and items. They sought donations. But still, she didn’t have any personal belongings or mementoes to fill her room.

By that time, Rives’ mother had moved into the woman’s home.

St. Louis County Public Administrator Timothy Weaks said he was appointed to oversee M.P’s estate last month. Immediately, she asked what happened to all of her assets.

“This incident has turned her life upside down,” Weaks said in court.

In April 2023, Rives was charged with defrauding A.B. and M.P. A few months later, he pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. And in January, he pleaded guilty to five counts of theft of government funds.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark said it was clear Rives was an “exploiter” who engaged in an “ongoing, sophisticated scheme” to defraud multiple people and the Social Security Administration.

“He’s lived a life that is substantially consumed by fraud,” Clark said.

He sentenced Rives to seven years and three months in prison. His mother is set to be sentenced in July.