Cathy Areu, a journalist whose career includes a stint as a repeat guest on Fox News, has been charged in southern Florida with kidnapping, elderly exploitation, and an organized scheme to defraud for targeting her mother, who is in her 80s.
Areu is believed to have obtained over $224,000 of her mother’s money, including some of the proceeds from a reverse mortgage for her house. Areu also previously took ownership of her mother’s residence via a document the elderly woman denied that she signed, and there were multiple incidents in which Areu and in at least one case a co-conspirator attempted to get her mother forcibly held in a senior living facility. In one of the incidents, she lied to the woman, saying they were simply going out for a get-together with her grandchildren, who are Areu’s children. In a second confrontation, she and another individual physically dragged Areu’s mother into a waiting vehicle before venturing to a facility. Neighbors notified local police after seeing one of the older woman’s shoes outside her residence, where the front door also remained open.
Areu’s attempts at seeing her mother forcibly held in assisted living facilities were connected by authorities to ambitions of taking further control of her mother’s financial resources. The woman was allowed to leave both facilities after state authorities concluded she didn’t actually require their services. A bio for Areu on the main website for Fox News was only taken down after prosecutors revealed their criminal case against her. She was described as “a frequent liberal voice on Fox News” in reporting from the Miami Herald. Areu was also involved with a 2020 sexual harassment lawsuit alleging a hostile work environment and targeting high-profile names at Fox, including Tucker Carlson. A judge concluded Areu didn’t have the required legal standing to bring the case because of her status as an unpaid guest. Authorities were attempting to arrest Areu since at least June, but her evasion saw her eventually spend some time outside of the country, in Mexico.
An archive of several years of Fox programming from the early 2010s shows Areu making appearances on Bill O’Reilly’s show. In another recently revealed set of charges, an ally in the Florida state legislature to Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis — Republican Joe Harding — was recently charged with a series of crimes, including wire fraud, for pursuing federal relief money tied to the COVID-19 pandemic in the names of two businesses that were no longer actually operational. Harding goes on trial early next year in federal court in Florida, and he resigned — effective immediately — after prosecutors revealed charges. Areu’s case, in contrast, is in state court. “Every incident of alleged elder exploitation or abuse touches our heart and never fails to shock us. It seems particularly harder to understand when the alleged perpetrator of the exploitation is a daughter, or a son or another blood relative,” State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said on Friday about Areu.
