I always thought there was something dishonest about Fox’s so-called “liberal sherpa,” Cathy Areu, but I never imagined she was this awful.

Areu was arrested in Miami Friday on “a host of felonies, including kidnapping, elderly exploitation and organized scheme to defraud,” the Miami Herald reported. Areu’s victim was her elderly mother.

Investigators say they believe Areu may have made off with over $224,000 of her 88-year-old mother’s finances, including proceeds of a reverse mortgage from the mother’s house. Investigators also believe Areu made bank withdrawals from her mother’s bank accounts and opened credit cards in her name.

The probe began in 2019 when state welfare investigators received a report that Areu was exploiting her mother. The elderly woman’s home had been turned over to Areu via a quit claim deed, a document the victim denied ever signing, according to the press release. Areu later claimed that other people were exploiting her mother, and that the woman had brain damage or dementia, the report said.

She also twice allegedly placed her mother involuntarily into an assisted living facility, using a revoked power of attorney, in order to get control of her mother’s assets.

As a long time blogger about Fox News, I have written many critical posts about Areu. The supposed liberal seemed more interested in currying favor with conservatives than she was in advocating for liberal causes or principles. For example, there was the time she validated Donald Trump’s false, authoritarian claim that he had an “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” She also wrote a column for FoxNews.com urging Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “jump off the impeachment bandwagon” about a month before Trump’s first impeachment.

I’m guessing Areu had some money problems. In 2020, in the year after she was being investigated for exploiting her mother, Areu sued Fox News for sexual harassment. Among other allegations, she accused staff of keeping her attached to a chair so that, in separate incidents, both Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity could make unwanted advances. Areu claimed she stopped getting booked on shows after she declined to go along.

But there were gaping holes in Areu’s allegations and her case was later dismissed. It looked a lot like Areu had tried to get a contributor’s contract and, when that failed to happen, she tried to get money from Fox another way.

That may be the only time that Carlson and Hannity didn’t deserve the terrible things said about them.