Pottstown woman charged with scamming relatives

A 29-year-old Pottstown woman who helped her uncle and grandmother set up an online banking account has been charged with swiping nearly $170,000 from it.

When Joelle Paige Speidel was asked by the two relatives to assist with the online Fidelity Brokerage Services account that they set up in February 2007, she also created log-in credentials to surreptitiously move money out of the account, Montgomery County prosecutors said yesterday.

Until this March, prosecutors said, Speidel allegedly moved thousands of dollars at a time into her own account in a series of transactions totaling $169,404. She confessed in July and told investigators that she had spent the money on car payments, vacations, and tuition payments to St. Joseph's University, prosecutors said.

Speidel's bail was set at $100,000 at an arraignment on counts of theft, unlawful use of computers, and other charges. She is due back in court for a preliminary hearing next week. - Derrick Nunnally