SEATTLE — A Seattle woman has been charged with theft and securities fraud after allegedly stealing $900,000 from musician Kenny G’s father.
Elle Barksdale Loe, 36, was charged Feb. 14 with three counts of theft from a vulnerable adult in the first degree and two counts of securities fraud.
Between May 2018 and May 2019, 97-year-old Morris Gorelick of Bellevue, whose son is saxophonist Kenneth Gorelick, invested thousands in Loe’s designer eyewear business, which was never operational, according to probable cause documents.
Loe is the daughter of Gorelick’s caretaker, and investigators allege she used that position to manipulate him.
Gorelick died in November, according to an obituary printed in The Seattle Times.
A canceled check shows Gorelick agreed to invest $100,000 in Elle Barksdale & Co. LLC, a marketing firm, in May 2018. He invested another $450,000 in September 2018 and $350,000 in May 2019, according to documents.
However, when interviewed by police last June, Gorelick seemed to be “suffering from memory loss,” and did not remember writing three checks worth $900,000.
Elle Barksdale & Co. LLC is registered with the Washington State Department of Revenue, but the company has not reported any wages and only reported $2,500 in gross income in the first and second quarters of 2018. The quarterly taxes for the rest of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 were delinquent, according to documents.
Investigators believe Loe spent the money on things like cars, clothes, entertainment and household goods after going through records between May 2018 and June 2019 from four accounts linked to Loe. Those include 11 payments to American Express totaling more than $131,000, 29 payments to Nordstrom for more than $34,000 and $11,000 in payments to Toyota of Kirkland and Volkswagen of Kirkland.
“After analyzing the bank records from Bank of America, I am unable to show that Elle Loe was using Morris Gorelick’s funds to further a business venture that would benefit him and fulfill his investment expectations in the eyewear business, not a marketing company,” Bellevue Police Detective Ray Lofink wrote in probable cause documents.