A 94-year-old befriended her hair stylist. It cost her $300,000.

The 94-year-old woman and her hair stylist had been friends for 20 years.

Such good friends, in fact, that when the Tucson, Ariz. woman’s husband died in 2011, hair stylist Supranom “Addy” Klos was given power of attorney, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

But then, in 2014, money started to disappear from the 94-year-old’s life savings. Eventually nearly all of the woman’s savings — some $300,000 — had vanished, prosecutors said. And it was Klos who was stealing it.

It took Klos only months to gamble away nearly all of her friend and client’s life savings, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said.

And it took an Arizona jury only about two hours to find Klos guilty, convicting the hair stylist on one count of fraudulent schemes, three counts of theft, one count of fraudulent use of a credit card and one count of unlawful use of power of attorney.

Brnovich described the 94-year-old as a vulnerable adult with dementia.

What Klos didn’t spend on gambling, she spent on dental implants and a new car, according to the attorney general.

Klos was taken into custody after the verdict, the attorney general said. She will be sentenced to a minimum of four years in prison.

One in six vulnerable adults is victimized to such an extent that he or she loses a third — or more — of his or her assets, according to the Arizona attorney general. Emotional damage from being the victim of those crimes can shave as much as three years off a victim’s life.

Fraud and exploitation victimizing seniors is an expensive — and expanding — problem.

“Financial fraud targeting older Americans is a growing epidemic that costs seniors an estimated $2.9 billion annually,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), chair of the Senate Aging Committee, said earlier this year as she introduced a bipartisan bill to protect seniors from fraud.

Law enforcement became involved in the Arizona case when the woman’s bank noticed large sums of money withdrawn from the 94-year-old’s savings account, prosecutors said.

Hundreds of thousands of older Americans fall victim to fraud, financial scams and abuse each year, according to Collins.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 5:13 PM with the headline "A 94-year-old befriended her hair stylist. It cost her $300,000.."