Mount Prospect man charged with defrauding 93-year-old woman

A 23-year-old Mount Prospect man, out on bond for a Schaumburg burglary last year, faces new charges that he defrauded a 93-year-old woman.

Authorities have charged Rocky Reed, of the 500 block of Ida Court, of bilking a Mount Prospect woman out of $1,200 for home repairs he never performed. A Cook County judge set his bail at $30,000.

The woman hired Reed to do the work after he repaired the front porch of the woman’s neighbor, said Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Lesley Gool.

Reed charged the neighbor $150, but insisted the work on the woman’s house would cost $1,200 which she paid, Gool said. It rained the day Reed was to begin the repairs and he left, promising to return the next day but never did, said Gool, adding that Reed did not respond to calls from the woman or her neighbor.

When the woman called her bank to stop payment on the check, she learned that it had already been cashed, prosecutors said.

Reed told police that he took the woman’s payment and “never had any intention of giving her the money back,” Gool said.

He next appears in court on this charge on Dec. 3.

Reed is one of five co-defendants charged with residential burglary of an elderly Schaumburg couple last year in what police described as a “ruse burglary.”

Two men barged into the couple’s home claiming they were doing construction work down the street and had to check a possible lighting problem, police said. The men fled the home after the others they were with, who were waiting in a nearby vehicle, alerted them of police presence in the area, police said.