Apr.06, 2010, 11:48 p.m.

WINTER HAVEN | After 31 years teaching fourth-graders in the Chicago area, Nancy Smith used savings to buy a house in Winter Haven and to live debt-free on her pension. Whatever was left after expenses, she invested in certificates of deposit.

In January 2008, Smith befriended Asoka Perera, a Sri Lankan native here on a temporary visa, who during the next two years systematically swindled Smith, now 82, out of her life savings of nearly $300,000, an arrest affidavit said.

Perera, 45, was arrested Monday and was charged with multiple counts of fraud and swindling to obtain property, grand theft, money laundering and writing bad checks. Besides Smith, his victims include six banks.

During first appearance Tuesday afternoon, Polk County Judge Robert L. Williams Jr. found probable cause to hold Perera and set bail at $93,000. If he makes bail, Perera must prove that the money was obtained legally, said Wayne Durden, an assistant state attorney.

All told, Perera is suspected of stealing $563,085, beginning in 2005, when he opened accounts at several banks then made cash withdrawals and wire transfers on insufficient funds, a Polk sheriff's affidavit said. Of the banks Perera is suspected of scheming to defraud, Washington Mutual was the biggest loser at $114,439. He took Wachovia for nearly $4,000 and Trustco for about the same, the affidavit said.

Passing himself off as a tea merchant, Perera is accused of bilking supply houses and customers out of more than $150,000.

Smith, the retired teacher, lost the most, beginning with a loan of $43,581, money Perera told her he needed to buy a home, investigators said. A few months later, Smith lent Perera $109,034 to allegedly pay for his mother's surgery.

Smith loaned Perera thousands more for his tea exportation business, according to investigators.

"The man was an expert at fraud and I was one of his victims," Smith said Tuesday. "I should have been more aware, perhaps. That money was to put me in a care-giving place for when I'm really old," she said with a laugh.

Smith said she was taken in by Perera and his wife after they advertised services for helping the elderly with driving and errands. She said the Winter Haven couple and their circle of friends, also from Sri Lanka, seemed friendly enough, but the Pereras soon came to her with appeals for monetary assistance.

"You're (open) to friendships when you're all alone," Smith said, "so they just buttered it up. They take you out to eat, bring you flowers on Mother's Day. They're good at what they do."

Smith said that eventually she began to listen to friends who suspected she was being duped out of her savings and reported Perera to the Polk Sheriff's Office.

Investigators said in the affidavit that Smith fits the profile "of an elderly individual who can be easily confused, misled and exploited by an individual for whom they have developed a relationship they perceive to be based on trust and confidence."

Prosecuting such crimes are tricky, Durden, of the Polk state attorney's office, said, especially when the victims appear sane and lucid and freely gave away their money. "It's hard to prove they stole anything," he said.

It's unclear what happened to Smith's money, Durden said. In the affidavit, Perera told investigators that he invested the money he borrowed "in hopes that he would be able to repay Smith with dividends."

Preying on the elderly is big business in Florida because of its large senior population.

"It happens more frequently than the public really knows," said Joe Rowland, a deputy director with Seniors vs. Crime, a volunteer organization affiliated with the Florida Attorney General.

"Older people have one thing going against them, that's the fact that they are lonely," he said. "They (scam artists) gain their trust and they get taken."

Smith said she's fortunate to be mortgage-free and receiving a pension income, which "just pays the bills." She said her 27-year-old house is showing signs of age.

"I need an air conditioner," she said. "I can pay taxes on the house but I can't make any improvements. I don't have my (savings). That's the big thing."