A co-owner of Schommer Insurance in Hastings has been accused of funneling $173,000 from her mother for her own personal expenses, and to keep her business open. According to court records, Mary Rose Polley Schommer, 53, of Hastings, was charged by summons last Thursday in Dakota County District Court with seven counts of felony financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult while acting as her mother’s power of attorney and sole trustee. According to a criminal complaint, the Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center in late 2019 received reports that Schommer was power of attorney for and sole trustee of a trust benefiting her mother, who was in her late 80s, suffered from dementia and had been in an assisted-living facility in Hastings since 2013. Bank account records determined that between May 2014 and April 2020 Schommer wrote 139 checks from the accounts to herself and also used the accounts to pay for her own personal expenses directly, according to the charges. The reports alleged that she owed more than $17,000 to the assisted-living facility for past due rent. During the investigation, she was moved to a second facility in Hastings where her account then fell behind over $32,000 in past due rent. It was also determined that she owed more than $4,000 to pharmacies for prescription medications. Schommer does not have a criminal history, according to court records. She has been court ordered to schedule a book-and-release appointment at the county jail prior to an initial May 23 hearing.
