Attorney general: ‘Mafia’ threat cost woman life savings

LANCASTER, Pa. – Authorities says a Pennsylvania woman has been scammed out of her $159,000 life savings by a man who told her she’d face Mafia retaliation if she didn’t give him money.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro says that man, 45-year-old Yancey Taylor, gambled away the money at casinos.

Taylor is from Donora, a Pittsburgh suburb, but the charges were announced Tuesday in Lancaster County, where the alleged 69-year-old victim lived.

Police say Taylor stole the money from the woman in 2013 and that she received threatening phone calls when she tried to resist. A state grand jury investigated the case, which began when the woman rented some property she owned in Westmoreland County to Taylor in 2012.

Online court records don’t list an attorney for Taylor, who faces a preliminary hearing June 9.