Deptford Grandmother Charged

A Deptford grandmother is accused of being a con-artist with a slip-and-fall scam designed to collect a small fortune.

Isabel Parker, 72, allegedly walked into at least 20 stores and pretended to slip and fall and then claimed the insurance money, authorities said.

"Ms. Parker began her odyssey in the slip-and-fall, trip-and-fall, fall-down business at least 10 years ago," said Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham.

Authorities said that since 1993, Parker went to dozens of stores in Philadelphia and Delaware County to pull the alleged scam.

"She would be on the ground and make somebody come to her so she could have a witness to the fact that she was sitting on the ground rubbing her knees or rubbing her back or rubbing her legs," Abraham related.

Abraham said Parker used 47 aliases, 11 addresses and 33 false Social Security numbers. Officials said she collected $231,000 worth of insurance claims in the cases. Authorities first became suspicious of Parker when she filed a claim against Bell Beverage.

"She had the whole floor to walk on and she had to go out of her way to get to where that little stack of cardboard was, and it was two or three feet high, so it was not the kind of thing you would miss seeing," said Steve Bell, one of the owners of Bell Beverage.

Investigators did some digging and found out Parker was charged and convicted of 29 counts of insurance fraud in Gloucester County, N.J.

Bell was disturbed by the scam. "(It) feels like you should be suspicious of everyone, if you have to be suspicious of somebody like her," Bell said.

In New Jersey, Parker was sentenced to four years for 16 counts of insurance fraud. She pleaded guilty last year. She was in prison, but is now under house arrest in Deptford.

She is now facing 20 additional counts of fraud in Philadelphia and Delaware County. If she is convicted, she faces 500 years in prison.

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