It was supposed to end over a month ago when Gibney signed off on a settlement agreement. The settlement would allow Eifrig to remain living in Rhode Island as she desires but also cost her $186,000 in lawyer and guardian fees -- including $60,122.49 for daughter Ardito’s lawyer.

But the settlement got stalled when Eifrig’s lawyer, Richard A. Boren, and her court-appointed guardian, Paula M. Cuculo, learned that Ardito had used some of her mother’s money, without court approval, to pay Mastronardi and to hire a Virginia lawyer to undo orders issued by Gibney.

Then, earlier this week, they learned from the Virginia lawyer that Ardito had taken almost $302,000 of her mother’s money out of her trust and put the money in various accounts in her own name.

James P. Head, Ardito’s Virginia lawyer, said in a letter to Boren that the reason his client had transferred the money was “to prevent her sister from accessing them.”

He said Ardito did this shortly after her older sister, Suzette Gebhard, a one-time congressional candidate and the former head of the Rhode Island League of Women Voters, moved their mother from Virginia to her house in Warren, without notifying Ardito. At the time of the move, in May 2006, Ardito had power of attorney for her mother and was co-trustee of her mother’s trust.

Head insisted in his letter that Ardito’s transfer of the money was “expressly permissible” under Virginia law because Eifrig’s trust gave her younger daughter the power “to hold property in her name or in the name of nominees.”

But Eifrig’s lawyer, Boren, disputed that today. He said he is “deeply troubled” by Ardito’s actions. Her ailing mother, who is now blind and also suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, needs her savings to continue to be able to afford her $4,900-a-month rent at Capitol Ridge, her assisted-living residence on Smith Street in Providence.

And Boren pointed out that even though Eifrig had testified in summer 2006 that she had about $735,000 in savings at the time of her move to Rhode Island, Ardito had given sworn testimony to Gibney in mid-2006 that the amount she was holding in her mother’s trust was $500,000 to $600,000.

Eifrig, he said, “testified on the mark…In fact it is approximately $725,000.”

Eifrig’s court-appointed guardian, lawyer Paula M. Cuculo, went further. She called Ardito a liar who had engaged in “a cover-up.”

“Who was she protecting the money for? Her or her mother? The excuses her Virginia attorney has come up with are blatantly false. There was no need to put money in her own name when Smith-Barney (a brokerage company) had agreed to freeze all of the funds, and she in fact had deposited several of Laurette’s accounts into the Smith Barney, She could have put all of the money in there.”

Cuculo said that since she first met Ardito in the summer of 2006, “she has repeatedly told me that the only money she was holding for her mother was between $400,000 to $500,000 and that she’d made a mistake on the stand” in claiming there might be $600,000. In fact, it there was much more so it was a cover-up.”

Head, Ardito’s lawyer, has repeatedly said in interviews that Ardito only has her mother’s best interest at heart. But Cuculo disputed that today.

“If she was truly putting the money into her own account to protect it…then she had an obligation to disclose what she had and she repeatedly lied about it. Had Richard and I not asked for Laurette’s tax returns as part of an accounting, I think that’s when she realized we were going to find out about these other funds.”

After Boren received the emoney from Ardito at his law office, he turned over the four checks -- all payable to Cuculo -- who promptly mailed them to an investment adviser in New York who is handling Eifrig's investments.