Combatting Elder Financial Abuse

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Combatting Elder Financial Abuse

Podcast: ACTEC Trust & Estate Talk
Episode Date: December 10, 2024
Host: Travis Hayes (ACTEC Fellow)
Guests:

• Julia Meister (ACTEC Fellow, Cincinnati, OH)
• Charles Golbert (Public Guardian, Cook County, IL)

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the widespread and growing problem of elder financial abuse, an underreported crime affecting millions of seniors and vulnerable adults each year. Travis Hayes introduces the topic, referencing national statistics, and hosts Julia Meister in an in-depth conversation with Charles Golbert. Charles shares both the scale of the issue and the actions his office takes (notably, a financial recovery litigation program), while offering real-life case studies and insights into legal collaboration, attorney misconduct, and preventative strategies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Scope & Reality of Elder Financial Abuse

• Financial Impact: Seniors lose approximately $36.5 billion per year to financial abuse (00:36).
• Underreporting Problem: The vast majority (87.5%) of cases go unreported, per the 2023 AARP study (00:36).
• Local Observation: Charles Golbert’s experience as Public Guardian for Cook County closely parallels the national data (02:25).
  • About half of new cases involve some abuse or exploitation.
  • About 40% of all cases involve specific financial exploitation.

“The national statistics that Travis cited are definitely consistent with what our office is seeing.”
— Charles Golbert (02:25)

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2. The Financial Recovery Program: Structure & Success

• Program Established: The Cook County Public Guardian’s office created an innovative financial recovery program (02:46).
• Team: Staffed by three senior lawyers focused exclusively on litigation to recover assets stolen before guardianship.
• Outcomes:
  • Over 15 years: 160+ cases litigated, more than $50 million recovered for clients (02:54).
  • Among the largest financial recovery efforts of its kind in the U.S.
• Awareness: Media coverage (local, national, and even international) helps increase public attention to these crimes.

“We’ve recovered more than $50 million. That’s five, zero, million dollars on behalf of the people under our guardianship.”
— Charles Golbert (02:54)

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3. Case Study: Grace Watanabe

(Begin: 04:00)

• Background: Ms. Watanabe, a frugal and disciplined former civil servant, accumulated ~$1 million in savings. With dementia in her 90s, she became a victim of severe exploitation by nursing staff at her care facility, Symphony.
• Details of Abuse: Staff wrote checks to themselves totaling ~$750,000.
  • The theft continued undetected until the bank detected unusual activity, but only after most funds were gone.
• Legal Action & Community Support:
  • The Public Guardian’s office became her guardian, moved her to safety, and sued the individuals and the care facility.
  • The Japanese American community rallied, attending hearings and providing support—even after her death.
• Outcome: Ms. Watanabe passed away at 100, but funds were recovered for her chosen charities.

“...she developed dementia in her 90s. But when she got dementia, the staff there started to plunder her savings...and they stole about $750,000, almost all of her life savings.”
— Charles Golbert (04:16)

“Every single court case, even if it was just an agreed continuance, dozens of people from the Japanese American community showed up to show their support.”
— Charles Golbert (05:19)

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4. Collaboration with Law Enforcement

(Begin: 07:00)

• Dual Approach: Full justice requires both civil recovery and criminal prosecution.
• Public Guardian’s Role: Provides thorough documentation and evidence to law enforcement.
• Law Enforcement Gaps: Often slow or reluctant to prosecute—even with complete evidence packages.
• Media Pressure: Public pressure (press conferences, publicity) sometimes pushes authorities to act.
  • Example: In Watanabe’s case, charges were filed only after a press conference.

“...sometimes law enforcement’s not as aggressive about these cases as we would like to see it be.”
— Charles Golbert (07:45)

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5. Attorney Misconduct as a Vector of Abuse

(Begin: 08:17)

• Frequency: Nearly one-quarter of financial exploitation cases involved misconduct by lawyers; in some, the attorney was the direct perpetrator.
• Four Main Malpractice Patterns:
  1. Misidentifying the true client.
  2. Ignoring signs of diminished capacity or undue influence.
  3. Facilitating fiduciary theft.
  4. Failing to protect cognitively impaired clients in settlements.
• Reporting: In all qualifying cases, lawyers are reported to the state disciplinary authorities.

“The lawyer’s malfeasance enabled exploiters to use the lawyer’s documents...to steal from the individual.”
— Charles Golbert (09:10)

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6. Case Studies: Lawyer-Related Exploitation

(Begin: 10:31)

a) “Jane” — The Isolated Devotee

• Situation: Elderly woman (94), advanced dementia, trusted priest, isolation.
• Fraud: Priest arranged for lawyer to draft trust, transferring her house and assets to himself—lawyer met only with priest, not Jane.
• Pattern: Lawyer had done similar documents for at least three other clients with dementia.
• Outcome: Documents invalidated, most money recovered, lawyer suspended.

b) “Gene” — The Paralyzed Victim

• Situation: Paralyzed man (75), coworker manipulates lawyer into drafting documents granting herself property and financial control.
• Fraud: Coworker uses power of attorney to steal $133,000 and tries to evict Gene.
• Community Role: Neighbors intervene, alerting authorities.
• Outcome: Home deed restored to Gene, partial funds recovered from lawyer’s malpractice insurance, lawyer disciplined.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s a crime that we need to understand and be on the watch for.”
  — Travis Hayes (00:36)

• “In fact, about half of all of our new intake cases have at least some issues of abuse or neglect or financial exploitation.”
  — Charles Golbert (02:32)

• “The lawyer never met with Jane in doing so, the lawyer only met with the priest...and we also reported the lawyer to the Illinois disciplinary authorities, and he was suspended.”
  — Charles Golbert (11:06, describing lawyer’s unethical facilitation of theft)

• “We try to use our financial recovery practice to call attention to and raise public awareness of this problem.”
  — Charles Golbert (03:38)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Time | |--------------------------------------------|----------------| | The scope and cost of elder abuse | 00:36–01:28 | | Office of Public Guardian’s financial recovery program | 02:25–03:54 | | Case study: Grace Watanabe | 04:00–07:00 | | Working with law enforcement | 07:00–08:17 | | Attorney misconduct in elder exploitation | 08:17–10:24 | | Detailed lawyer-related case studies | 10:31–13:42 |

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Overall Tone and Final Reflections

This episode maintains an urgent, pragmatic, and empathetic tone—highlighting both the enormity of elder financial abuse and the pivotal role of legal professionals in identification, prevention, and recovery. The discussion blends legal acumen with personal stories, underscoring the human impact and systemic gaps that enable exploitation, especially when attorneys are complicit. The message is clear: vigilance, proactive litigation, and collaboration with law enforcement and the community are essential tools in safeguarding vulnerable seniors.

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Transcript

[A]

Combating elder financial abuse that is the subject of today's ACTEC Trust and Estate Talk.

[B]

Welcome to ACTEC Trust and Estate Talk from the American College of Trust and Estate Council, a professional society of peer elected trust and estate lawyers in the United States and around the globe. This series offers professionals best practice advice, insights and commentary on subjects that affect our profession and clients. And now our ACTEC Fellow host with today's topic.

[A]

This is Travis Hayes, ACTEC fellow from Naples, Florida. Elder financial abuse is the crime of the 21st century. National Council on Aging reports that the loss to seniors from financial abuse is 36.5 billion per year. It's also an underreported crime. A 2023 AARP study shared that 87.5% of elder financial abuse cases are never as estate planning professionals. It's a crime that we need to understand and be on the watch for. ACTECH Fellow Julia Meister of Cincinnati, Ohio is joined by guest Charles Golbert of Chicago, Illinois to discuss this important issue. Charles is the public guardian for Cook County, Illinois and his office serves as guardian for approximately 700 wards who are mostly older individuals with disabilities and manages more than 100 million in diverse estate assets. Welcome Julia and Charles.

[C]

Thank you Travis. As practitioners, most of our direct experience with elder financial abuse is in civil litigation settings. But there is another facet of combating elder abuse in the legal system that we can discuss with you today thanks to the participation of our guest Charles Gilbert of the Cook County, Illinois Office of Public Guardian. Charles participated in in a professional program with us at our Actech 2024 fall meeting in Chicago and today is a capsule of the insights he offered to us at that time. Charles, as Travis mentioned, financial exploitation of seniors and people with disabilities is an exploding problem in our society. Are the national statistics that Travis cited consistent with what your office sees and and if so, what is your office doing to address this problem?

[D]

Thank you Julia. The national statistics that Travis cited are definitely consistent with what our office is seeing. In fact, about half of all of our new intake cases have at least some issues of abuse or neglect or financial exploitation. And in fact about 40% of our cases have issues specifically about financial exploitation. To address this problem, our office started an innovative financial recovery program. It's staffed with three senior lawyers and their full time practice is complex litigation to recover money that had been stolen from the people we served before we were appointed to protect them. And the program's been very successful. Over the past 15 years we've litigated more than 160 cases and we've recovered more than $50 million. That's 5, $0 million on behalf of the people under our guardianship. And then we're able to use that money to care for the individual. Based on the number of cases litigated and amounts recovered, we believe that ours is one of the largest, if not the largest, financial recovery practices of its kind in the country. And we also try to use that practice to call attention to and raise public awareness of this problem. A number of our cases have received publicity here in Chicago and Illinois. Some of our cases have received national publicity, and a few of them have even received international attention.

[C]

Thank you. Could you share with us an example of one of your office's financial recovery cases, please?

[D]

Yeah, I'll share the story of Grace Watanabe, whose case received pretty extensive national coverage. Mrs. Watanabe was born in the United States and was always a United States society citizen. But despite that, when she was a girl During World War II, she and her whole family spent time in the Poston Internment Camp in Arizona. And after the war, she finished school, and then she came to Chicago for college. And then she was a career civil servant with the federal government. And she was always frugal and disciplined about savings and acquired about a million dollars for her retirement. And she moved back to Chicago and she outlived all of her family. She never married and she never had children. And then when she was in her 80s, she had a fall and realized that she needed help with her care. And so she moved herself into a place called Symphony. It's part assisted living and part nursing care. And she was doing well there until she developed dementia in her 90s. But when she got dementia, the staff there started to plunder her savings, and they stole about $750,000, almost all of her life savings. And eventually her bank got suspicious, kind of a day late and a dollar short, or I should say a few months late and $750,000 short. But they eventually called our office, and we became Mrs. Watanabe's guardian, and we moved her out of Symphony. We moved her to a safe nursing home. And we moved sued the individuals at Symphony who stole her money, and the corporation and the people who stole her money, they did so by writing checks to herself. They had access to her checking book, and they just started writing checks themselves for $50,000, $25,000, until it added up to $750,000. And something that was really interesting and to me, inspiring about the case is her case got publicity, and Mrs. Watanabe really became a cause celeb and the Japanese American community. Every single court case, even if it was just an agreed continuance, dozens of people from the Japanese American community showed up to show their support. And they would send her holiday cards and birthday cards. They sent Japanese food products to her in her nursing home. They came and visited her. It was really something to see. And Symphony really dragged the case out as much as they could. In my opinion, it was a strategy that they thought maybe if she died before there was a recovery, they'd be off the hook. And she, in fact, did die at age 100. But Mrs. Watanabe had a will and left her money to two prominent charities who took over the litigation when she died. And shortly after she died, they obtained a sizable recovery. So Mrs. Watanabe actually never saw the money recovered, but the charities that were meaningful to her and important to her ended up getting the money.

[C]

Thank you. Well done. Can you tell us about your work with law enforcement to obtain criminal prosecutions of elder abuse offenders in addition to civil recoveries?

[D]

Yeah. I'm a believer that these cases, full justice in these cases require both civil recovery of the money stolen and also criminal prosecution of the offenders. So we always try to work with law enforcement, and we do our depositions, we get all the discovery, get all the bank records, we do the spreadsheets, tracing where all the money went, and then we turn this all over to law enforcement. However, it's been our experience that sometimes law enforcement's not as aggressive about these cases as we would like to see it be. We've had cases where we did all the work, turned it all over, all the depositions, everything, and they don't do anything. And in fact, Mrs. Watanabe's case is a good example of that. And so sometimes we've actually done press conferences. Why are there no criminal charges in these cases? And we did that in Mrs. Watanabe's case, and her case is a particularly sympathetic case. And right after the press conference, guess what? There were criminal charges filed against two of the thieves, and they got convictions.

[C]

Do any of your financial recovery lawsuits involve misconduct by attorneys?

[D]

Yeah, unfortunately, a good number do. To give you an idea, I mentioned that over the past 15 years, we've litigated about 160 cases, 39 of those cases. So nearly a quarter involved the misconduct of a lawyer that was of such a high level that we felt the need to report that lawyer to the Illinois Bar disciplinary authorities. In a small number of those cases, the lawyer was actually the crook. The lawyer was actually the exploiter. But in the majority of the cases, the lawyer was not the crook. But the lawyer's malfeasance enabled exploiters to use the lawyer's documents the lawyer prepared to steal from the individual. And those cases seem to fall under four broad categories. One is the lawyer didn't understand who their client was. They thought that the daughter who came in with her father, who had dementia is the client. And they did with a daughter wanted without talking to the father whose money was actually at stake. The second fact pattern is the lawyer ignores obvious red flags that their client has diminished capacity or is being unduly influenced and proceeds to prepare documents any ways that the person cannot understand. The third broad fact pattern is the lawyer represents a client who is a fiduciary, like a guardian or an agent under a power of attorney, who's acting contrary to the best interest of the principal or is even stealing from the principal. And the final fact pattern is, in PI cases, the plaintiff, the victim, is somebody under cognitive disability, and the PI lawyer obtains a settlement or a judgment and either just gives it all to the person with cognitive disability who is unable to manage it or spend it, or the PI lawyer gives it to a family member without any guardianship or bond or any type of protection in place. Place. And the money is not used for the victim who has the cognitive incapacity.

[C]

Could you share some particular examples of the types of cases involving lawyers you were just mentioning?

[D]

Yeah, so I'll share the case of somebody I'll call Jane. That's not her real name. I'll call her Jane. She was 94 years old. She never married. She had no children, and she was isolated in the community and had advanced dementia. And Jane was very religious and had gone to her neighborhood church regularly for years. And she had a relationship with a priest at that church. And when Jane became homebound, the priest would go to her home to take confession and to give her communion and so forth. But when Jane developed dementia, the priest was somehow able to find a lawyer who agreed to prepare documents, putting Jane's home in a trust with the priest as the beneficiary. And the priest also got a power of attorney for property that was used to steal Jane's savings accounts. And the lawyer never met with Jane in doing so, the lawyer only met with the priest. And in his deposition, the lawyer admitted that he knew that Jane had dementia. And even more remarkably, during the course of discovery, we came to learn that that same lawyer had prepared estate planning documents for at least three additional Older clients with dementia that were then used to plunder the savings of those three additional people, in addition to Jane. So we ended up getting the documents involving the house invalidated, and we recovered most of the stolen money, but only after lengthy, inexpensive litigation. And we also reported the lawyer to the Illinois disciplinary authorities, and he was suspended for a minimum of one year and until further order of court. But he ended up retiring during that period, so he never practiced law again. And then in a second case, I'll call the person Gene. He was paralyzed after a stroke at age 75. And a CO worker was able to find a lawyer to prepare a power of attorney for property, naming the co worker as agents, and a quitclaim deed giving Jean's home to the co worker and also a will naming the co worker's beneficiary. And the co worker took this power of attorney and used it to steal $133,000 from Gene's bank accounts, which represented the totality of his life savings. And if this co worker had stopped there and just waited until Gene died to take his house, probably no one would ever have learned of his misdoing. But he decided to try to evict Gene from his own home so that he could sell the house. Neighbors got suspicious, and neighbors called the police, and the police called us, and we became Gene's guardian, and we sued this lawyer, and we were able to get the documents involving the house invalidated so that Gene could continue living there. And so the eviction case went away as a result, and the co worker was judgment proof. But we were able to recover $75,000 from the lawyer's malpractice carrier. And we also referred this lawyer to the Illinois Bar Disciplinary Board, and the lawyer was disciplined. So those are a couple of examples. Thank you.

[A]

Thank you, Julia and Charles, for discussing important issues relating to elder financial abuse and bringing them to our attention.

[B]

Thank you for listening to this episode of ACTEC Trust and Estate Talk, the podcast series about wealth planning matters from the American College of Trust and Estate Council. To find an ACTEC lawyer near you, visit actec.org Please subscribe to this series and leave us a rating or a review.