A man who schemed to exploit a 94-year-old Miami-Dade woman out of cash and her $600,000 home has been sentenced to two decades behind bars, authorities said.

Alejandro Diaz Torriente, 67, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Wednesday after he was found guilty in the financial exploitation case, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said.

The prison term will be followed by 10 years of probation.

Diaz Torriente had been arrested in 2023 after a four-month investigation by the State Attorney’s Office Elder and Vulnerable Adult Exploitation Task Force.

The victim had been living on her own in the El Portal home she’d bought in 1980, but in 2021 was declared legally incompetent.

At some point Diaz Torriente, who had been an acquaintance of the elderly woman, started referring to her as “mom” and identified himself as her son during doctor’s visits and other interactions, authorities said.

The investigation found the woman’s social security benefits were being redirected to unknown bank account and Diaz Torriente had opened bank accounts he used to defraud her out of around $20,000 in cash.

He also filed a fraudulent title adding himself as a joint tenant with right of survivorship to her home, then moved into the woman’s home and changed the locks, authorities said.

“This case sends a clear message to those who seek to leave our elders destitute and discarded that we will not tolerate this type of heartless crime against our vulnerable residents,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement Wednesday.