SHARPES, Fla. -- A 39-year-old Cocoa man has been arrested and charged with organized fraud after offering to pay women hundreds of dollars to change a diaper he did not need.
Sean Kelly was arrested Wednesday night outside his home and taken to Brevard County Jail in Sharpes. He often did not pay the women he hired to care for him via the Internet classified ad site Craigslist, investigators said.
For weeks, Kelly walked feebly into Janet Schulte's home, acting like a 5-year-old, she said.
"He would basically sit on the couch and watch SpongeBob (cartoons) most of the day, play video games with the kids," Schulte said.
Kelly answered her Craigslist ad offering child care, promising to pay $600 a week to care for a disabled brother. But police said there was just one man behind the scheme: Sean Kelly.
"Supposedly he was in a horrible car accident," Schulte said. "From what Mike (a man claiming to be Sean's brother) told me, he had mental impairment, you know, he was pretty badly brain damaged and he had bladder damage."
After Local 6 first aired a story about Kelly in July, another woman came forward saying Kelly scammed her, too, out of about $7,000 last year.
Police said he was seeking new victims Wednesday before they arrested him on organized fraud charges.
The station confronted him in July with accusations that he had approached people through Craigslist seeking babysitting services for an incontinent brother.
His response: "I didn't. I didn't."
But police said he did. So does Schulte.
"I've changed his diaper plenty of times," Schulte said.
She said she never got the sense that he was just trying to expose himself to her.
The family filed a police complaint in July, but authorities said they could not make a criminal case. But now they believe they can.
Psychiatrists have a term for behavior like this: paraphilic infantilism.
Kelly remained at the jail Wednesday night on a $5,500 bond.
He has a prior record; Kelly was sentenced to probation in 2006 for felony fraud after repeatedly walking into an emergency room under assumed names and claiming he needed care.
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