Login | February 22, 2025
Panel upholds felony conviction of man who stole $450K from cousin
KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: February 21, 2025
A Franklin County appeals panel affirmed the conviction and sentence of a 56-year-old Reynoldsburg man whom the court noted “gambled away” more than $450,000 of an elderly cousin’s bank accounts.
Finding no merit to the claims raised by Mark Mattox, Tenth District Court of Appeals Judge Michael Mentel upheld his conviction on a first-degree felony theft charge and sentence of five to seven and a half years in prison.
“The evidence was legally sufficient to show that Mr. Mattox acted without (his cousin, Alice Gravely’s) consent, beyond the scope of her express or implied consent or by deception,” Mentel wrote for the 3-0 panel. “(Gravely) stated unequivocally that she had never consented that Mr. Mattox do anything other than pay her bills while she was in Virginia. Withdrawing over $450,000 to gamble at casinos was not within the scope of her consent.”
According to case summary, Gravely, a Columbus resident, left for Virginia in November 2019 to stay with her sister while Gravely received treatment for kidney cancer.
Mattox had agreed to pay Gravely’s bills and take care of her home while she was away.
Before leaving, she went to the bank with Mattox to withdraw $50,000 for her sister for living expenses during her treatment and to place another $50,000 in a certificate of deposit, summary detailed.
Gravely allowed Mattox to put his signature on the savings instrument as she would be in Virginia and unable to sign for the instrument should the funds need to be withdrawn during that time.
Gravely said she never authorized Mattox to sign on either her checking account or her money market account.
According to the summary, the woman only realized there might be a problem with her bank accounts when she received letters from Social Security and her retirement account informing her that deposits were not going through because a bank account had been closed.
She called Mattox, who told her that he took care of the problem immediately. He also told her that he had moved money from the checking account without having consulted her first.
Mattox said he would recover the money and mail it to her sister’s home.
Gravely learned from the bank that the funds from all of her accounts had been withdrawn.
Mattox subsequently blocked the woman’s phone number on his phone, but spoke to Gravely’s sister, blaming his stepson for the missing money.
A Franklin County grand jury indicted Mattox on the theft charge March 22, 2023, and the prosecutor subsequently amended the indictment to clarify that the victim of the offense was an elderly person, a person in a protected class. Gravely’s status and the alleged amount of the stolen funds elevated the offense to a first-degree felony.
Mattox entered a plea of not guilty and the case proceeded to trial, summary continued.
The jury returned a guilty verdict on the theft charge and the trial court sentenced Mattox on Feb. 5, 2024.
Mattox appealed, asserting that the trial court was wrong to deny his motion for acquittal, that it denied his fair trial rights to a unanimous verdict and that the verdict was against the manifest weight of the evidence.
“We conclude that Mr. Mattox has presented no basis to challenge his conviction for theft of a person in a protected class based on the weight of the evidence, its legal sufficiency or any a violation of the jury unanimity required by Crim.R. 31(A),” Mentel concluded. “Accordingly, we overrule the three assignments of error and affirm the judgment of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.”
Tenth District judges Betsy Luper Schuster and Carly Edelstein joined Mentel’s opinion.
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