Dartmouth man sentenced for bilking elderly man

BOSTON—A Dartmouth man has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for bilking an 84-year-old widower he had befriended out of his entire $750,000 estate.

Richard Souza was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston to four years and three months in prison and three years of probation.

Authorities say the 47-year-old Souza persuaded the victim to buy real estate and take out an $85,000 loan, which Souza then withdrew from banks in small increments to avoid detection.

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Dartmouth man sentenced for bilking elderly man

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Man Charged With Bilking Elderly Man Out of His Entire Estate

OBRA SPECIAL NEEDS POOLED TRUSTS and IL State Senate Bill 2840

We at ProbateSharks continue to have concerns about OBRA Special Needs Pooled Trusts. OBRA Trusts were created to allow people who have special needs to qualify for Medicaid by depositing their money into these trusts. The intention of these trusts was to preserve estates of disabled people by allowing them to qualify for public aid nursing homes while preserving their estate for their special needs.

Unfortunately, these trusts are being abused by certain guardians in Cook County. Elderly disabled people with large estates are being targeted for guardianships through unscrupulous methods including: Illegal removal of Powers of Attorney, deceit of the elderly by owners of guardianship companies, and inaccurate medical reports being submitted into court records to make the elderly appear to be disabled with dementia. Once the rich elderly disabled person becomes a ward of the court, the unscrupulous guardians place the wards’ estates into OBRA trusts, place the ward into for-profit Medicaid-funded nursing homes, and then deplete the estate through guardian fees, care management fees, and attorneys fees.

In other words, OBRA Trusts are being used by some to financially exploit the elderly disabled while profits are obtained for the guardians, attorneys, case managers, and for-profit nursing home owners. This is being done at the expense of the wards, and the taxpayers in the state of Illinois.

In June of this year, Governor Quinn signed Senate bill 2840, which became Public Act 97-0689.It is called the Save Medicaid Access and Resources Together (SMART) Act. Its impact is anything but friendly to Illinois seniors, especiallly those who are wards of the 18th floor of the Daley Center.

Unlike the January 1st rules changes, which were driven by federal laws, these new rules changes are almost entirely due to the well-known Illinois budget problems. The new law cuts $1.6 billion from the Medicaid budget, primarily by modifying eligibility requirements and benefits.

The biggest change made by SMART is the elimination of Pooled Payback trusts (also called OBRA d(4)(c) special needs trusts) in Medicaid planning for those over the age of 65, UNLESS THEY ARE WARDS OF THE STATE OR PUBLIC GUARDIAN!!!

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OBRA SPECIAL NEEDS POOLED TRUSTS and IL State Senate Bill 2840

Guardianship Case Highlights Plight of Elderly

WW2 veteran Guadalupe Olvera’s right to move in with his daughter in Aptos was disputed by Nevada authorities for three years

Last month Guadalupe Olvera, 93, rode in the Aptos Fourth of July parade. A survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, Olvera cruised through town in a vintage World War II jeep with his fellow VFW members. They waved at the families lining the streets, who saluted from the sidewalk and shouted, “Thank you for your service!”

It was a lovely day, but it’s been a long road for Olvera and his family to the Aptos parade. For most of the last three years Olvera and his daughter, Rebecca Schultz of Aptos, have been entangled in a messy and expensive guardianship dispute with his court-appointed guardian, Jared Shafer, a professional guardian and fiduciary who operates a business in Las Vegas.

Guardianship, also referred to as conservatorship, is a legal process where a judge appoints a third party individual to care for a “ward,” usually an elderly or disabled person. The guardian takes direct control over the ward’s life, both personally and financially. The guardian is often responsible for big decisions such as where the ward will live, who is allowed to visit with the ward and even whether to continue with life-support systems.

But the three-year dispute with Shafer wasn’t over the finer details of Olvera’s care. It was over who was entitled to serve as guardian of him and his nearly $1 million estate: Shafer or Schultz, Olvera’s only living child.

Schultz, an artist given to impassioned exclamation over injustices, sees more than a troublesome series of lawsuits for herself over the course of the ordeal. She sees at best a system weighted against families and at worst a conspiracy to steal from the elderly, sanctioned by Nevada courts and overlooked by the federal government.

She claims that Shafer has stolen outright from her father, saying that a year’s worth of Olvera’s carpenter pensions and social security payments are missing and have “never been accounted for.”

She says Shafer fabricated bills and withdrew excessive funds from Olvera’s Wells Fargo checking account, depleting it by almost $300,000 since November 2009.

“I went into this not knowing anything about guardianship. Not knowing anything about lawyers. I’m just an artist. I’m just a normal person. I didn’t know how bad Nevada was. I didn’t know how corrupt it was,” says Schultz.

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Guardianship Case Highlights Plight of Elderly

See Also:
Former Public Guardian

Lupe Olvera – Nevada/California Victim

Marcy E. Dudeck – Nevada/California Victim

Elderly Brooks man, victim of financial exploitation, tells his story

BROOKS, Maine — All his life, Arthur Green worked with his hands.

The 74-year-old retired construction worker and carpenter used those hands for 50 years as a laborer in Massachusetts. He also used them to build himself a home and an adjoining camp on Sanborn Pond in the small town of Brooks, where he expected to peacefully enjoy his twilight years among the loons and the tall white pine trees.

But when he used them in March 2011 to take hold of a notice of eviction that was served on him by the granddaughter he had helped raise, that sense of peace disappeared.

He learned that he had inadvertently signed away all his rights to the property, and that 20-year-old Nevin Bennoch of Brockton, Mass., was trying to sell some of his real estate while he was living there.

“It’s a heck of a thing to go through,” Green said this week.

What happened to Green is a tangled knot of financial exploitation, unclear understanding of estate planning and family betrayal that took months to unravel with the help of Legal Services for the Elderly, according to the attorneys who helped him recover his property.

Jaye Martin, director of the Augusta-based nonprofit agency, described Green’s situation as a “very classic scenario of a family member stealing the house and land and then trying to evict the elder from his own home.”

What separates Green from others is his willingness to talk about what happened to him, Martin and attorney Denis Culley said.

On Tuesday, Green sat at the kitchen table of the former hunting camp he had transformed into a comfortable lakeside home, his black cat Marie playing at his feet. He suffers from severe health problems and settled himself slowly and painfully into a chair. He said that he wanted to share his story so that nobody else will have to go through what he did, and Culley sat next to him as he disclosed the details of what had happened.

“Don’t sit there and think everything’s rosy, ‘cause it ain’t,” he said. “The worst ones to trust is your family.”

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Elderly Brooks man, victim of financial exploitation, tells his story

Bank manager charged with stealing elderly man’s money

A St. Charles bank branch manager faces charges and is accused of withdrawing money from an elderly man’s accounts over a two-year period, police said Wednesday.

Lynn A. Pranga, 56, of the 200 block of Fairhaven Drive in St. Charles, is charged with one count each of financial exploitation of the elderly, forgery and theft – all felonies. She was arrested Tuesday night and released on $3,000 bond.

She could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

St. Charles police were led to Pranga, who worked as a manager at an MB Financial Bank branch at 2607 Lincoln Highway, during a six-month investigation that ultimately revealed she stole about $20,000 from an elderly man she knew, according to police.

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Bank manager charged with stealing elderly man’s money

Chicago woman allegedly swindles elderly widow, leaves her at Westchester nursing home

La Grange, IL —

A woman who was caring for an elderly suburban Chicago woman was charged with swindling her out of her condominium and leaving the disabled widow at a Westchester nursing home with nothing, according to media reports.

Asura Rollins was charged Friday with one felony count of financial exploitation of the elderly. She allegedly obtained power of attorney over the 93-year-old woman and persuaded her to sell her River Forest home before leaving her at the nursing hime with no belongings.

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Chicago woman allegedly swindles elderly widow, leaves her at Westchester nursing home

Klobuchar bill that protects seniors passes key test

WILLMAR — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s legislation to protect seniors from neglect or abuse by court-appointed guardians passed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

The Guardian Accountability and Senior Protection Act would help states improve their oversight of guardians and conservators of seniors and vulnerable adults. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, cosponsored the bill with Klobuchar, a Democrat.

The legislation was approved with a 15-3 vote and will be referred to the full Senate for approval.

The goal is to protect people from being neglected or financially exploited by their guardians.

The issue will grow in importance as the population of seniors doubles in the coming decades, Klobuchar said during the committee hearing on Thursday.

“I know every state has incidences of people getting ripped off millions of dollars when their loved one is supposed to be under the care of a guardian,” she said. “Most guardians do amazing work, good work, but again you have a situation where you have a very few that are causing a lot of harm.”

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Klobuchar bill that protects seniors passes key test