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THE TRAGEDY OF GUARDIANSHIP FRAUD
What can happen when Court ordered Guardianship goes WRONG
Three Other Guardianship Fraud Cases
Notable Quotes:
“Let me first emphasize that the FBI has identified elder fraud and fraud against those suffering from serious illness as two of the most insidious of all white collar crimes being perpetrated by today's modern and high tech con-man. Many elderly citizens rely on pensions, social security and life savings to support themselves. The losses inflicted by these unscrupulous con men and their organizations are both financially and emotionally devastating to these victims.” Dennis Lormel, former Chief, Financial Crimes
Section, FBI
“Everyone, even the experts, can
be taken in, manipulated, conned by them. A good sociopath can play a concerto
on anyone’s heartstrings. Your best defense is to understand the nature of
these human predators.”
Dr. Robert Hare, author, “Snakes in Suit: When
Psychopaths Go to Work”
Case #1: Glynnis
Walker, MBA, Ph.D.
In 2010, three women stole my
mother. This is the story of how I tried to get her back.
Her name was Rosalind, but my
dad always called her “Joy” because she was his joy for sixty years. The trio
of conspirators that targeted her, and later my family, consisted of a lawyer,
a neighbor and a part-time supermarket checker.
Two of them were motivated, in
part, by an overwhelming need to control and manipulate others. All of them
were enticed by the prospect of easy money. During their association with my
mother, they abused her, defrauded her, changed her will, stole her identity,
and mine.
My mother was an easy target.
She was a sweet, naive woman who belonged to a generation when women were
brought up to be trusting and compliant. She also had recently been diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s. It was not difficult for them to take over her life, isolate
her from her family, empty her bank accounts, use her credit cards, and later,
when the time was right for them, arrange for her to die so they could profit
from the bogus will they created.
Unfortunately,
though what happened to my mother is perhaps one of the worst examples of elder
fraud, experts in the field agree that it was hardly a rare series of
events. Fraud and abuse happen every day
to millions of seniors, and the numbers are escalating.
Case #2: Susan Warren, MA, LPC, LIAC, NCC, CHT
In 2004 I went to see a new GYN who referred me to her gay
male friend, Terry, to be a caretaker for my mother. He worked for us
from July - Dec and in that time my mother, who was diabetic and always
overweight, lost 50 lb. so he must have been giving her something as she was
dining out daily. He turned her against her 5 physicians (she never saw the
GYN), her friends, and at the end against me when I became her financial POA.
He took her to our bank and the bank mistakenly allowed her to withdraw
all her money and she deposited it in his bank. His plan was to take her
to Vegas with all of his gay friends and marry her, as he convinced her he
wasn't gay.
He had an appointment with an attorney for when they returned
with a list of her assets and was sure she would sign everything over to him as
he had convinced her I was going to put her in a nursing home. The bank,
on realizing what had happened, called Adult Protective Services and the Judge
had me evict him. I had to get an attorney, the State appointed my mother
an attorney, and my mother was declared incompetent and I became her Guardian.
We spent the next 2 years in court because my attorney wasn't ethical.
In 2007 I changed attorneys and all the insanity stopped. I agreed
to let the Tucson police interview me for their show on "predators of the
elderly/incompetent" if they would investigate the GYN and caregiver as
there was never an investigation after I got my mother's money back. They
said they would but never did. But they said this is one of the biggest
scams going in this country.
Case #3: Of A Respected and Well Known Police Detective Lieutenant (Retired)
Names are omitted to protect this person from further physical harm. This message is for others.
Details: In 2011 he was declared a vulnerable adult by the courts through the actions of his wife. He was 64 years old. He had recently filed for divorce and made plans to live in Arizona during the duration of his divorce. He had inherited several million dollars when his mother died in 2009. This was his third wife, and he told several people that he thought she was a sociopath. It is widely believed that he was drugged by his wife and with the help of a friend and a guardianship firm, he was kept medicated, isolated and stripped of his assets. His first wife may be a complacent participant since she made it known that she was never forgiving him for divorcing her. She is wealthy in her own right and a close friend of the third wife and the friend who betrayed him. The wife worked for a City Attorney’s Office in Washington State for over 20 years. That Police Department made it clear that they would not investigate this matter. The victim had told several friends outside of the area that his third wife had slept with many on that police force. The guardianship firm is the largest and oldest guardianship firm in Washington and has a long-standing reputation for not adhering to Standards of Practice in their care of clients. Although the wife and the friend who betrayed him were not allowed to be his guardian by the GAL who investigated and left this man with the right to vote , the guardianship firm put the wife in charge of her husband, cancelled the divorce, and friends were not allowed to see or talk to him.
…Depression in elderly persons can often mimic the effects of dementia (Kaszniak & Christenson, 1994). Psychomotor retardation and decreased motivation can result in nondemented persons appearing to have pathophysiologically determined cognitive disturbances in both day-to-day functioning and on formal neuropsychological testing. Depression can also cause non-demented persons to over-report the severity of cognitive disturbance. Consequently, it is important to perform a careful assessment for depression when evaluating for dementia and age-related cognitive decline, and determine what coping strategies exist and ways in which coping can be modified to more fully integrate the older client to his/her environment and reduce their distress.
In the case of this man, there was no input from his physician of 20 years in the May 2011 psych report that his wife used in June 2011 to declare him a vulnerable adult; the psych report had no medical records of any history of dementia and was based entirely upon the wife’s opinions and statements and his almost immobile appearance described in the exam. Per a witness in April 2011 who visited with him in his home two weeks prior to this bogus psych exam, she said that his physical and mental health seemed perfectly normal. He was still driving and living alone. For his vulnerable adult hearing June 2011 per attorney for the defendant who was sued for trying to help him, this man was almost immobile and expressed blank facial features.
In October 2011, per the guardianship firm when that same attorney met with the guardianship personnel for an update in behalf of her client, she was told his physical health was again normal but his mental health was “extremely impaired” and he could only say yes or no. By the next year, this same man demonstrated sound cognitive skills in Feb. 2012 during a psych consultation, which was done following a close friend’s email stating that this victim asked him to take him from his home when he called the victim. The friend was not allowed to see the victim when he later came to the house to see his long-term friend and was chased away by his caregivers. This man was harassed and lied to by a police detective friend of the wife.
The psych exam reported that the victim was taken to his neurologist in June 2010 to check for a possible stroke. In 2011, a few months prior to his being declared a vulnerable adult, this man had obtained a clean-bill-of-health from this same neurologist. Court records show that the victim had a letter typed by his friend that he delivered to his personal physician in 2010 stating he thought his wife was a sociopath. Declarations from his childhood friend state the victim had high anxiety since childhood since he was often severely beaten by his father. The childhood friend states in her declarations that she was not allowed to see the victim and that he told her he was afraid of his wife on various occasions when they met for lunch.
This man additionally sent emails to several friends throughout the United States asking for help shortly before he was declared a vulnerable adult. The email contained a letter written to his first wife by a close friend asking for her help and detailing the problems this victim had with his third wife. The victim had told many of these friends this information in previous personal conversations over a multi-year period of time. Calls to this man from one of these parties after receiving the email confirmed that he was frightened of what his wife was going to do to him. The victim had not wanted the letter to go to his first wife because he was afraid she would betray him as well.
It is also known that the wife changed the locks on the house and changed the phone to an unlisted number to make sure that others could not see nor talk to the victim. These many facts are the basis of speculation that this man was indeed a victim of guardianship fraud.
To Summerize: These are the major steps taken in guardianship financial fraud cases commonly done throughout the United States by attorneys and the courts. It's criminal.
1. A close friend or family member, the targeted victim, is sued on bogus charges.
2. Another family member or a guardianship firm tells the court the sued person is in eminent danger from the suing person.
3. If the sued person (victim) can't convince otherwise, they are placed as a ward of the state “for his/her protection.”
4. His/her estate can then be plundered by the participants of the fraud, the guardian, the attorneys and court,even perhaps a family member and any paid-for cops or others used to intimidate witnesses and friends.
5. The victim is kept isolated and medicated and once the estate is depleted, victim dies of supposed "natural causes," often a horrific death.
No one Goes to Jail.
Michael Larsen and Anthony Domanico ****************
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| This is an illustration of three cases that leave family and friends in a state of disbelief of how quickly and easily guardianship fraud is committed | ||
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