Miami-Based Reporter Accused Of Ripping-Off Mother

Cathy Areu

Cathy Areu, a journalist and former periodic Fox News guest known as the “Liberal Sherpa,” has been arrested in Miami on accusations that she kidnapped and financially exploited her elderly mother. 

The Miami Herald reports Areu, 51, was booked into a Miami jail early Friday on a host of felonies, including kidnapping, elderly exploitation and organized scheme to defraud. Miami-Dade police detectives had been trying to arrest her since June, when a judge signed a warrant for her arrest. 

According to a Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office press release, she is believed to have been evading arrest and even took off to Mexico for a time.

Areu, who also goes by Cathy Areu Jones, remained jailed on Friday afternoon and was being held with no bond. Investigators say they believe Areu may have made off with over $224,000 of her 88-year-old mother’s finances, including proceeds of a reverse mortgage from the mother’s house. Investigators also believe Areu made bank withdrawals from her mother’s bank accounts and opened credit cards in her name.

Mug shot 12/22

The probe began in 2019 when state welfare investigators received a report that Areu was exploiting her mother. 

The elderly woman’s home had been turned over to Areu via a quit claim deed, a document the victim denied ever signing, according to the press release. Areu later claimed that other people were exploiting her mother, and that the woman had brain damage or dementia, the report said. 

“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 in a statement on Friday. 

Areu in the early 2000s was the publisher of Catalina magazine, which was “dedicated to breaking the stereotypes of Latinos in the U.S.” She also claims to have been a contributing editor for the Washington Post Magazine between 2000 and 2012.