Florida Drops Criminal Probe of DeSillers’ Use of Donations

MIAMI —  The state has dropped its criminal investigation into Maria DeSillers’ handling of almost $700,000 donated for her late son’s liver transplants, a state prosecutor said Friday.

“The laws just simply don’t cover the situation that occurred here,” Dade County State Atty. Janet Reno said.

DeSillers spent some of the money collected on behalf of her 7-year-old son, Ronnie, for jewelry, clothes and a car, as well as $79,000 in cash and payments directly to herself, prosecutors said.

The state looked at charity solicitation statutes, along with grand theft and embezzlement laws, but could not prosecute the Miami woman, Reno said.

“We can’t prove that when she solicited the funds she intended to defraud anyone,” Reno said. “And she and her ex-husband are the legal heirs.”

Ronnie died last year at Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pa., while awaiting a fourth liver transplant.

The prosecutor’s closing memo showed that DeSillers withdrew $322,000 of the funds between April, 1987, and March, 1988.

Along with the $79,000 in payments to herself, DeSillers spent $35,500 on cash and payments to friends, $19,000 on auto-related payments, $3,100 on a mobile telephone, $10,800 on jewelry, $8,900 on clothes, $5,500 on furniture and $5,100 on her apartment rent, the memo said.

The memo said also that she made $42,700 in payments on behalf of the Ronnie DeSillers Foundation and paid $43,400 to sick children or their families and $25,000 in legal fees and various other expenses.