Former Autumn Leaves Senior Living Employee Accused of Stealing $1.8M from Residents

The office manager of an East Dallas senior living facility is behind bars, accused of bilking more than 100 residents out of their Social Security stipends, to the tune of $1.8 million. 

Diane Carol Dancer is charged with felony theft at the Autumn Leaves community near White Rock Lake. Family members of Autumn Leaves residents say Dancer targeted tenants with dementia, asking them for rent money — after they’d already paid — and depositing it in a third-party account. The address of the bank account she used was traced to her personal residence. 

Dancer, a 57-year-old Glenn Heights resident, was arrested Dec. 13 and remains in the Dallas County Jail on a $100,000 bond. 

Autumn Leaves Senior Living Community Accuses Former Employee of Stealing From Residents

An investigation into missing money was launched in early 2024 by Molly Terry, April McElhone, and their friend Tiffany, all of whom volunteer at the retirement community and have loved ones who live there. 

WFAA broke the story of Dancer’s arrest shortly after she was taken into custody. 

We reached out to Joshua Hoes, associate executive director at Autumn Leaves, which operates under Life Care Services LLC. Hoes replied immediately with this statement: 

“The Dallas Police Department formally charged and arrested Diane Dancer, a former Autumn Leaves employee, for alleged theft.  We thank the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas County prosecutor for their thorough investigation which allowed this arrest to be made. Our team has and will continue to cooperate with authorities in the prosecution of this case. Ms. Dancer’s actions are not reflective of our community’s culture or values, and we are thankful for the ongoing support of our residents, families, and employees throughout this investigation.”

Life Care Services LLC operates several facilities across the U.S. To date, no other employees, including Dancer’s supervisor at the Emerald Isle Drive location in Dallas, have been implicated in the crime or terminated from employment. 

Loved ones of Autumn Leaves residents say this is a call to action to ensure better oversight, bookkeeping, and checks and balances are in place to protect residents in the future. 

“It’s one lady in one business office and you can’t check to see if she’s doing her job?” said the relative of an Autumn Leaves resident. 

Broken Trust at Autumn Leaves

Molly Terry moved her mother into Autumn Leaves in 2022 and immediately became a fixture at the senior community, hosting bingo games and befriending the residents. 

Earlier this year, Terry told CandysDirt.com that she was contacted by a male resident on a Saturday morning in February. The man said an employee from the business office told him his rent had increased and he needed to write another check. He said he wouldn’t be able to do that and the employee — later revealed to be Dancer — reportedly told him to pack his bags and move out. 

Terry said she called Dancer and was told the matter was none of her business. The resident, who has Parkinson’s disease, has since passed away. 

Terry said Dancer also reportedly told the resident with Parkinson’s that “the machine couldn’t read his handwriting,” so she filled out checks for him and got his signature. When Terry contacted the resident’s bank, she found that the checks were made out to Royalty Advocate Services LLC, an account tied to Dancer that no one else in the Autumn Leaves administration had heard of. Terry believes that Dancer stole at least $30,000 from that one resident. 

“She had [another] woman write a check for $4,938,” Terry told us in March. “That isn’t even close to what your rent would be. Two days later, she went to her and said, ‘I still need to get that check from you.’ She did that to a lot of people, where they wrote rent checks twice within the same week.” 

It’s troubling, said those close to the situation, that private citizens including Terry and her friends were the ones who had to conduct an investigation and call the police. Terry knocked on doors and asked residents with whom she’d developed trusting relationships what they’d written on the checks they gave to Dancer.

“They would let me in because they all know me so well,” Terry said. “They were comfortable letting me look through their bank accounts. Whenever I saw one that said Royalty Advocate, I asked if I could take pictures and then of course we had them go to their bank and get copies.”  

An arrest affidavit shows that Dancer is accused of bilking money from 102 victims at Autumn Leaves. Terry said that the victims’ accounts were credited, but she hoped Dancer would be ordered to pay restitution. 

“No one had to pay more money or pay back anything,” Terry said. “They have insurance, so they made an insurance claim.” 

Terry said she was glad that Dancer was finally arrested — she’s suspected of taking money over a period of years and had been employed at the facility since at least 2016 — and hopes that trust is being restored at the senior community. 

“Everyone is pleased that she’s in jail,” Terry said. “They have a meeting with the residents once a month and at first everyone was like, ‘Why should we trust you now?’ A new lady took over and she’s very sweet. [The residents] seem to be fine with her.” 

Repairs Needed at Autumn Leaves 

According to Terry, Autumn Leaves had been operating in the red for two years and there was little oversight of the lone business office employee. Hoes had been on the job for less than six months when Terry and two friends uncovered the scam. 

“The building has fallen into disrepair because they didn’t have the money to fix things,” Terry said. “They kept upping people’s rent.” 

Currently the main elevator is broken and some recent damage occurred from flooding. Old buildings occasionally have issues like leaky roofs and mold, Terry explained, and the tenants understand, as long as repairs aren’t being neglected and the costs aren’t being transferred to the seniors, who live on fixed incomes. 

The monthly rent is about $1,800 for an efficiency apartment, $2,300 for a one-bedroom, and more than $3,000 for a two-bedroom. Tenants are provided three meals a day, Terry said. 

“I needed my mom to be in a community,” Terry said. “The irony is that I moved my mom there for security. She kept getting scammed. She had a roofing scam where she paid a guy $40,000. They got her on a lot of stuff during COVID when I wasn’t able to be over there all the time. They got her on the credit card scam where they tell you that you have to go to Target and buy a gift card. You’re moving a loved one into a place where they can have security so that people can’t come knock on her door and sell her something. They ultimately all got scammed anyway.” 

This story is developing and we’ll continue to follow it as new information becomes available.