A brother and sister in The Villages have been accused of bilking an insurance company out of $22,000.
Sophie Nassif Bolous, 74, who lives in Villa Vera Cruz in the Village of Santiago, is facing a felony charge of fraud. She was arrested on a warrant last week and booked at the Sumter County Detention Center. She has been released on $2,000 bond.
Her brother, 81-year-old Youseff El-Masry, who also lives in Villa Vera Cruz, was arrested on a charge of fraud earlier this year.
The brother and sister, who are from Egypt, have been charged after an investigation by the Florida Department of Financial Services Division of Investigative and Forensic Services.
El-Masry collected $22,050 from Genworth Insurance for care provided for his wife, Earline Peyton.
Bolous filed paperwork claiming she had provided care for Peyton at the rate of $25 per hour. She also claimed she was not related to Peyton by either blood or marriage, according to the investigation. Bolous said she was providing care 78 hours per week.
Genworth Insurance on May 12, 2021 initiated a “care call” with El-Masry who had Bolous with him on speaker phone. El-Masry, who emigrated to the United States in 1968 and spent many years in Chicago, told the insurance company representative that Bolous’ “English is not the best,” the report said. The call was conducted on a recorded line. Bolous claimed she was working about 10 hours per day, helping Peyton get out of bed and go to the bathroom. She also said she helped bathe Peyton and get her to the dinner table. An investigator later analyzed the call and determined that Bolous was “being coached.”
When an investigator went to Bolous’ home this past August, she was confronted with the fact she had been making $1,800 per week providing care for Peyton. Bolous said “that doesn’t make sense.” She said she did not receive a penny for the care and claimed she was “volunteering.” During the interview, she also admitted El-Masry is her brother.
El-Masry has been in the headlines due his fierce battle earlier this year with the Community Development District 2 Board of Supervisors in a bid to save an illicit addition he made to his home without the approval of the Architectural Review Committee. He claimed he made the addition to house his ailing wife.
El-Masry also owns the villa next to the one which had the unapproved Florida room. The next-door villa was the subject of a court case in 2020 with allegations that El-Masry was a less-than-sympathetic landlord.
El-Masry filed a lawsuit claiming the tenants owed him $3,400 in rent and utilities at 2166 Estevez Drive. The figure represented the amount he believed he was owed for May, June and July 2020.
The mother of the male tenant of the home wrote to the court in September 2020 claiming that El-Masry had refused to accept their money. In the letter, the mother claimed that El-Masry shut off the water at the villa and ordered her son and his wife to use a bucket and a hose, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also claimed that her son, who is mentally disabled, worked for El-Masry “cleaning up his nasty houses” but wasn’t paid “a dime,” according to the letter on file in Sumter County Court. She also claimed El-Masry sabotaged the air conditioning unit at the rented villa. The home at 2166 Estevez Drive was the subject of a deed compliance case later that year. At the time, neighbors complained that El-Masry allowed the property to deteriorate while he was living next door.
