by Dennis Dalman
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on July 20 announced that he has charged a Sartell resident (a former Cloquet police officer) for alleged financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.
Cloquet is a city just south of Duluth.
Filed by Ellison in Carleton County District Court, the county in which the alleged offenses occurred, the three-count criminal complaint includes charges of gross misdemeanor of financial exploitation and felony attempted theft by swindle. The three-count criminal complaint had been referred earlier to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office by the Carleton County Attorney’s Office.
The woman charged, Laci Marie Silgjord, is the wife of Sartell Police Chief Brandon Silgjord, who was chosen in March to be the city’s new chief and who began the job on June 5. He has had 16 years of experience in law enforcement, primarily as a deputy sheriff for St. Louis County in the Duluth area.
In the complaint report, it states that Lisa Marie Silgjord met an elderly woman when she responded as a Cloquet police officer to a call about the woman’s missing purse. That was in May 2020. Silgjord befriended the woman, who was in her late 70s and who was experiencing increasingly acute cognitive problems.
About five months after Silgjord’s friendship with her, the woman suffered a stroke and was placed in a hospital where she later died.
The complaint alleges Silgjord attempted to inherit the woman’s entire estate and represented herself to a bank as the victim’s fiduciary, thus gaining access to the bank account, despite no legal authority for that fiduciary role. The woman, who was estranged from her husband, had no children and had never written a will.
In early 2021, the complaint alleges, Silgjord, who had performed guardianship duties for the woman now and then for about five months, filed claims against the woman’s estate – one for about $71,000, the other for about $86,000. Those claims, however, were denied.
At the time, Silgjord stated, “There is no formal will, but Joan (the woman who had died) told me and my husband she loved us and wanted to take care of us. I have this recorded on my cell phone.”
Cloquet city officials voted to fire Silgjord in February 2021. The city agreed to pay her $49,000 for what she said had harmed her: “humiliation, damage to reputation, emotional harm arising from employment.” The city also paid her regular wages and benefits, plus attorney fees of $32,800.
Silgjord had been an officer for the Cloquet Police Department for seven years. After the charges were brought against her, she was released on bail as she awaits a next court appearance.
In a statement to Cloquet’s newspaper, the Pine Journal, Silgjord’s attorney shared the following statement from her:
“I proudly dedicated my life to the service of others through both my military and law enforcement career. This is a bittersweet time in my life, as I will miss the community and my work towards justice for crime victims. However, I am hopeful to put this chapter behind me and move on to new opportunities for myself and my family.”
