Davenport man faces charges for bilking elderly woman

A Davenport man faces first degree theft charges for making up wild stories to get an elderly Davenport woman to give him lots of cash. Police say 35-year-old John Kepford started borrowing money from a 90-year-old woman several years ago when he lived next door to her. Kepford moved away, but over the past few months he talked to her again and conned her out of about 24-thousand dollars. He supposedly told her he was inheriting a large amount of money from his father who died in a car wreck in Atlanta. He told her he needed the money to fly to Atlanta and Florida to take care of the million-dollar inheritance because his father didn’t have a will. He also told her he needed cash to pay his lawyers, and to pay for trips to Washington, D.C., to meet with Janet Reno to speed up probate. He told her he’d repay her 200-thousand dollars once the estate was settled.