'Marked for Destruction'

A crime perpetrated by her Professional Legal Guardian, arranged by an Attorney.

Locked away in an Assisted Living Facility against her will.

Her Diary of Elder Financial Abuse and Fraud.

Learn how Adele's neighbors rescued her.

What Adele Fraulen might have thought to be nothing more than a meaningless bad dream one night in 1935 would actually come true. At age 79 she would find herself living a nightmare -- a struggle for her life, simply because she innocently trusted the wrong professionals to help with her portion of a Million Dollar inheritance; they would steal her very existence. Her neighbors, Chris and Patricia Zurillo, would realize that Adele's life was going terribly wrong and dedicate themselves to freeing her from captivity. “Marked For Destruction” is a rare book that exposes an ever-expanding crime against our elderly.

A gift from Adele's neighbors: Download a FREE Copy of Marked for Destruction

About The Author:
John Caravella patrolled the streets of the City Of Wauwatosa (Milwaukee County, Wisconsin) from 1976 to 1989. Citizen trust resulted in his clearing arsons, armed robberies, missing fugitives, dozens of burglaries and two homicides. After retiring, he volunteered his investigative skills to help others. “That is how Adele came into my life,” Caravella said. "I learned that she was 'imprisoned' and had to be freed. Through this book, Adele’s voice exposes the deceptive schemes used to keep her quiet."

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Marked for Destruction

Britney Spears - Not Competent to Take Oath

Britney Spears' lawyers are trying to block her deposition in a perfume lawsuit, because they say she's not legally competent to give sworn testimony.

Brand Sense Partners is suing Brit for $10 million, claiming she had a deal with the company but pulled a double-cross by trying to cut them out of a lucrative project with Elizabeth Arden.

Brand Sense wants to take Britney's deposition, but Brit's lawyers have so far refused, on grounds Brit is under a conservatorship and can't be forced to testify without the approval of the conservatorship's attorneys.

No word on whether the attorneys for the conservatorship will sign off on the depo, but Brand is tired of waiting and is now asking the judge in the perfume case to order Britney to sit for the deposition.

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Britney Spears - Not Competent to Take Oath

Vermont Elder Abuse Inquiries Backlogged

The state agency responsible for overseeing investigations of abuse, neglect, and exploitation of elderly residents has agreed to eliminate by Oct. 1 a backlog of 300 cases awaiting investigation by hiring staff, responding to calls with 48 hours, and establishing new procedures to avoid future problems.

Vermont Legal Aid and two advocacy groups had threatened to sue the Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living if officials had not agreed to the corrective action plan signed Tuesday by advocates and Commissioner Susan Wehry.

Advocates became aware of the size of the backlog at a December meeting with state officials.

“It’s been a problem for years," said attorney Barbara Prine of Legal Aid’s Disability Law Project. “People for the most part had lost faith in the adult protective system."

Full Article and Source:
VT Agres to Improve Elder Abuse Case Inquiries

YouTube: Private Guardian Abuse to the Elderly in Florida

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YouTube

The Quiet Menace

In the Houston area, more than 60 percent of 1,500 cases handled each month by Adult Protective Services deal with elderly people who no longer can protect and provide for themselves, APS officials said.

People tend to dismiss odd behavior in the elderly as eccentricity, or they don't want to get involved in someone else's affairs, experts say. But self-neglect is likely to increase as baby boomers grow older, they say, making intervention and prevention more important than ever.

"We're trying to educate the public and people dealing with the elderly about the services available to them," said James Booker, director of Region 6 of APS, which oversees Harris County and 12 surrounding counties.

Focus of TEAM
In many self-neglect situations, the person just needs a little help to stay independent, Booker said. Most of the clients are women and most live alone, he said.

Self-neglect can be physical, medical or both. Some elderly people can't cook, clean house or bathe themselves. Some don't eat properly; some lack running water or air-conditioning. Their houses might be filthy and in disrepair.

Others lack access to medical care. They may have stopped taking their medicine or they haven't seen a doctor in years and they've developed a serious illness, such as cancer or diabetes.

The breakdown in their ability to plan and carry out tasks can be caused by issues such as a stroke, dementia or depression, according to researchers.

To address self-neglect, Region 6 has collaborated with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Baylor College of Medicine for the past 15 years. The partnership is called the Texas Elder Abuse and Mistreatment Institute, or TEAM, which consists of clinical care, education and research. Region 6 is the only APS agency in the state to use such a multidisciplinary approach.

Full Article and Source:
The Quiet Menace

Investors Trust Judge Joe Ashmore, but his Trust Doesn't Pay Back

For three months last year, Muhammet Atayev—California businessman and, by his own account, a former Turkmenistani cabinet minister—limited himself to a small universe in Dallas. He spent his nights in a room at a Best Western motel. In the morning, he slipped into business clothes, gathered his things and walked a one-mile stretch of sidewalk—past Denny's, under Stemmons Freeway and up Oak Lawn Avenue, arriving at a patch of grass behind an Exxon station.

Once there, he stayed from 9 to 5 each day, a sign hanging around his neck. He spent the balance of the steamy late summer on that corner, his humorless face glistening with sweat, though he never seemed to soak through his suits. He ate nothing during the day and drank only water.

He kept regular business hours, never missing a day.

The sign summed up his purpose simply. Addressed to Mr. Joseph Ashmore, Mr. Jack Wilemon and Mr. Allan Clark, it asked: "Where is our money??? I will be on a hunger strike until I die or get the money."

The money never came. A $250,000 investment—a handshake deal that he claims was supposed to return $25 million in just three months—had left Atayev with nothing but a stack of old emails and a pile of sweaty shirts.

But a strange thing happened as he stood there: People started to stop, sharing with Atayev stories of other can't-miss investments from the last few years that all went back to the men whose names were scrawled on his sign.

In fact, as lawsuits, disciplinary hearings and federal investigations detail, there were dozens more people whose money ended up in bank accounts under Ashmore's name, for investment partnerships with Clark and Wilemon.

In 1975, [Ashmore] began his tenure as judge in Dallas County Probate Court No. 3. He spent 11 years on the bench, handling contested wills and other delicate rulings. He earned glowing reviews—97 percent approval in one Dallas Bar Association poll—and became an expert on mental illness policy.

When he left the bench, Ashmore started a private law practice, handling probate claims and other issues and growing the firm to include a handful of lawyers, including his son Gary Ashmore and daughter Lori Ashmore Peters. The firm's office is just a few short blocks down Maple from his father's laundry business.

A handful of probate lawyers declined to talk about Ashmore, but receptionists at their firms jumped at the chance to gush what a good friend he is. A good ol' boy who can hold his own in Dallas' finest circles, Ashmore speaks some Spanish and Arabic, and his English carries a deep Texas drawl. He's known to conduct business in his suite at Lone Star Park, where he likes to watch the horses.

So it's understandable how the invocation of Ashmore's name could lend credibility to the too-good-to-be-true deals to which his name has so often been attached.
Full Article and Source:
Investors Trust Judge Joe Ashmore but his Trust Doesn't Pay Back

Editorial: Fix Assisted Living Facilities From the Ground Up

The Miami Herald should be applauded for its heart-wrenching series Neglected to death. Sadly, it’s no huge surprise that it found a high level of elder abuse across the state, given our unusually high incidence of Medicare fraud, especially in South Florida.

What’s clear from the series is that seniors are as vulnerable a population as our children — and they need as much protection. The impact of elder abuse lasts a lifetime — same as child abuse. As a society — and as the children of the elderly citizens affected — it is our moral obligation to ensure that safeguards are in place.

If the series has left anyone doubting the urgency of the need to address this problem broadly and systematically, consider the imperative of enlightened self-interest. Not a day goes by without a reminder of the impending demographic bubble, as the boomers begin to transition into the next stage of their lives. From now until the year 2050, we will experience nonstop growth in the senior population.

The current average age of individuals entering an assisted living facility is the mid-80s. We can expect an exponential increase in demand for long-term care within the next 12 to 15 years.

In the absence of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, this demand will be driven by Alzheimer’s patients, a most vulnerable population without the means to advocate for protections and quality care.

Add to that the possibility of shortages in the supply of caregivers. A report from the Institute of Medicine, an independent think tank, projects that the pool of medical personnel will be too small and unprepared to serve the boomer seniors.

Given all this, it is clear that the crisis in elder care is not “impending.” Its time is now.

Full Editorial and Source:
Fix Assisted Living Facilities From the Ground Up

Man's Treatment Shocks Critics

The court order authorizing electroshock treatments for Ray Sandford says that when he arrived at a psychiatric hospital early last year, he was “grossly psychotic” and violent toward staff and other patients.

Sandford, who has been declared legally incompetent, said he agreed to the treatments at first, but after more than 40 of them, he finds it hard to remember names and other things. His bipolar disorder is under control, he said, and he should have the right to say no.

The court disagrees, but advocates of the mentally ill who call themselves the “Mad Pride” movement have rallied to his defense.

“This is worse than waterboarding,” said David Oaks, executive director of MindFreedom International, who led about two dozen people in a rally at the Minnesota Capitol this month to draw attention to Sandford’s case.

“Offer somebody the choice between waterboarding or forced electroshock, and a lot of our people who know what it is will say waterboarding,” Oaks said.

The Mad Pride movement includes groups and individuals that seek not only an end to forced treatment but to redefine their conditions as something to be respected instead of diseases to be suppressed.

Full Article and Source:
Man's Treatment Shocks Critics

See Also:
Worse Than Waterboarding

YouTube: NJ Guardian and Three Lawyers Admit Elderly Financial Abuse

Guardian Vanessa D. Taylor, attorneys James Boutillier, Lawrence N. Meyerson, and Shawnda Floyd admit elderly financial abuse based on their failure to respond to an order to show cause and complaint filed in Essex County Probate Court.


Source:
YouTube

Jeffrey Schend Denied Court-Appointed Lawyer

The court will not hire an attorney for a former guardian accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from disabled and elderly clients.

Outagamie County Court Commissioner Maureen Roberts Budiac told Jeffrey M. Schend at an indigency hearing Thursday he has too many assets to qualify.

Schend, 44, told Budiac that his only assets are a boat, a car and about $1,000 in a bank account he can’t access. He said his family is trying to sell the boat and car to pay for an attorney.

“Until then, my hands are tied,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Budiac said Schend can ask to postpone his June 15 preliminary hearing if he’s unable to hire an attorney by then.

The biggest transaction unaccounted for among Schend’s Outagamie clients involved a trust account worth almost $168,000 when it was closed in 2010. The money was transferred to JMS. In another case, JMS did not document where nearly $145,000 from a client’s two certificates of deposit was spent after the accounts were cashed out in 2010 and transferred to JMS accounts.

Investigators continue to pore over the records of Schend’s former clients.

He is being held in jail on a $100,000 cash bond.

Full Article and Source:
Shend Denied County Appointed Lawyer

See Also:
Red Flags Raised for Years Over Vulnerabilities in Guardianship Program

Former Atty Pieter DeJong Gets 5 Years for Theft From Deceased Woman's Estate

Chastised by a judge for dishonoring the legal profession, a now-disbarred lawyer from Long Valley was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for stealing $265,552 from a deceased woman’s estate.

Pieter DeJong, 63, was first disbarred by the state Supreme Court in 2009 for misappropriation and his prosecution followed. He pleaded guilty in state Superior Court, Morristown, in March to theft by failure to make required disposition of property received between 2005 and 2008 from an estate.

DeJong, who mainly practiced real estate law, in 2005 represented the buyer of a piece of property. He issued two checks totaling $265,552 from his attorney trust account to the seller, Jane Davis, but she died within a month of the closing so the checks were never cashed. Instead of notifying Davis’s estate, DeJong used the money as his own over a three-year period until estate executors noticed sale proceeds were never deposited into Davis’s account, Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Weber said.

Weber called the theft “a crime of opportunity.” DeJong apologized, saying he has lost the respect of his family and a career he loved. He said he accepted blame but attributed his actions to negligent bookkeeping.

Full Article and Source:
Washington Township Lawyer Gets 5 Years for Theft From Client's Estate

See Also:
Former Atty Pieter J. DeJong Charged With Stealing From Client's Estate

Former York (PA) Mayor Supports Older Americans Act

Elizabeth Marshall has lived on her own for 10 years. She remains in the home she and her husband, Howard, bought in York in 1954. With the help of family and the York County Area Agency on Aging, the 92-year-old has been able to live comfortably and independently.

[May 25], Marshall, the first elected female mayor of York, traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak to members of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging to support reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, which was first established in 1965.

The act has helped give about $1.8 million or 20 percent of the budget used by the area agency on aging, according to a news release from the York County Area Agency on Aging.

Marshall told the senate she has experience in government and understands the tough decisions they must make. Marshall receives meals three times a week from the agency, and told the senate she enjoyed the visits of those who deliver the food.

"We can't forget the senior centers," Marshall said in her testimony. "They give seniors what they need and are far cheaper than nursing home care."

Full Article and Source:
Former Mayor of York Supports Older Americans Act

Red Flags Raised for Years Over Vulnerabilities in Guardianship System

A nonpartisan federal report released in the fall warned of flaws in the guardianship system that leave vulnerable people open to exploitation similar to that detailed in a criminal complaint against an Appleton man accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients.

The report from the Government Accountability Board is the latest to raise a red flag about the system. A 2007 study released by U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., and Gordon H. Smith, R-Ore., suggested improvements to safeguard people who rely on guardians, and a 2006 report by the AARP Public Policy Institute cautioned that checks on guardians were lax.

Jeffrey M. Schend, who owns the company Outagamie County hired to serve as guardian for 48 people, hasn't told investigators where about $500,000 went after disappearing from some clients' accounts. But there were signs Schend wasn't properly reporting financial transactions, including a $4,700 judgment Shawano County won against him in 2010 for his mishandling of a client's account.

Confidentiality concerns
Sylvia Rudek, a director of the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse, says Wisconsin's system is weighted so heavily in favor of confidentiality that it prevents adequate oversight of guardians, who are hired mostly by counties after a court has determined a person cannot make safe and sound financial decisions. Most of the people represented by guardians are mentally ill, disabled or old.

Rudek said she ran into roadblock after roadblock after learning that a guardian had stolen more than $78,000 from her great-aunt, a Wisconsin resident. Though the guardian, Kathleen Simane, ultimately was sentenced to two years in prison on two theft convictions by a Rock County judge, Rudek said getting the case into the criminal justice system took Herculean efforts.

"We had no idea of what was going on," Rudek said. "I couldn't get any information."

In many states, she said, families can examine a guardian's books, but Wisconsin keeps those records sealed.

"The legislators will tell you the files are closed to protect the ward," she said, using a term often applied to a person represented by a guardian. "In reality, closed files protect the guardian team from oversight."

The report released in September by the federal Government Accountability Office backs up Rudek's contention that guardians are not properly supervised.

The office wasn't able to determine whether abuse by guardians is widespread, but researchers found hundreds of cases in 45 states between 1990 and 2010. Researchers thoroughly reviewed 20 of the cases to try to find commonalities.

"In 12 of 20 cases, the courts failed to oversee guardians once they were appointed, allowing the abuse of vulnerable seniors and their assets to continue," the report says.

Schend was required to file annual reports with Outagamie County's register in probate, Sue Lutz, but she declined last week to discuss his record keeping, citing confidentiality provisions. In all, Outagamie County has 1,065 people served by guardians.

Clients suffer
Sorting out the finances of clients represented by Schend likely will be a long process. Investigators searched his home as well as two rental storage complexes at which Schend rented space and seized several documents from one storage unit. Schend at a Thursday hearing said police took all of his financial documents.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Kyle Sargent said last week some of Schend's clients had limited assets that can make it hard to tell the difference between legitimate expenses and thefts, while some clients had sizable estates that vanished.
"It could get bigger," Sargent said. "It all depends."

Schend has been unable or unwilling to tell investigators where the money went, but two former employees say Schend lived a luxurious lifestyle, taking expensive vacations, buying expensive cars and gambling frequently.

Schend was bonded, which means that his clients might get some of their money back, but Rudek, the director of the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse, said those victimized by inept or criminal guardians bear the weight of the problem for years.

"I still feel it, mentally and physically," she said. "My aunt saved; she was frugal. (She was) a good woman who worked all her life."

Full Article and Source:
Red Flags Raised for Years Over Vulnerabilities in Guardianship System

See Also:
Read the GAO report: GUARDIANSHIPS - Cases of Financial Exploitation, Neglect and Abuse of Seniors

NASGA: Helen Fabis, Wisconsin Victim

Remembering a Treasured Aunt 10 Years Later

Guardian System Flaws Allow for Exploitation

Ohio Atty Sentenced to Prison, Restitution for Theft From Trust Fund

An attorney was sentenced in Cuyahoga County to prison time and ordered to pay restitution after he pleaded no contest to charges of theft amounting to more a million dollars.

Judge Michael Astrab handed down an eight-year sentence to 61-year-old Charles Manning of Chesterland on Friday. He also has to pay more than $1.5 million in restitution to the victims and pay a $20,000 fine.

Manning entered the no contest plea to two counts of theft on February 15, 2011.

According to the Cuyahoga Prosecutor’s Office, Manning stole more than $1.5 million from two clients’ trust funds and used the money to invest in a failed water, sewer, pipeline, and a communications and power line construction business operating in southern Ohio.

Full Article and Source:
Attorney Charles Manning Sentenced to Prison Time, Restitution for Theft

Jury Awards $2.5 mil to Widow in False Elder Abuse Case

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded $2.5 million Wednesday to a widow who alleged her mentally impaired spouse was removed from her care based on lies motivated by greed.

Jurors deliberated nine days before finding in favor of Robin Rodriguez, who maintained that Robert Acciani, a former deputy city attorney in Torrance, used his influence with law enforcement to build a false case of financial and elder abuse against her.

The jury found a conspiracy existed to inflict emotional distress upon Robin Rodriguez and to commit trespass.

Robin Rodriguez wept as the verdict was announced in her favor. She later joined her attorneys to thank jurors in the hallway.

Her suit alleged that Acciani and his wife helped remove Rami Rodriguez from his Rolling Hills Estates home after he developed dementia, prompting Robin Rodriguez to wage a lengthy court battle to get him back, which she did some 15 months later in January 2005.

Rami Rodriguez was a millionaire real estate investor and nightclub owner. His widow filed her suit in June 2008 in Los Angeles Superior Court against the Accianis, the county and four members of the Sheriff's Department: Detectives Curtis Henderson and Christina Moreno-Anderson, Sgt. Barbara White and Deputy Kwan Chow. All denied any wrongdoing and also said Robert Acciani did not influence any aspect of their work in the Rodriguez case.

Chow was exonerated of all allegations against him.

"We all were just trying to do our jobs," Chow said outside the courtroom.

Henderson testified he did not believe Rami Rodriguez's removal from his home was motivated by greed and that he would have taken action against the Accianis if he thought they did anything illegal.

Henderson and White are now retired.

Rodriguez maintained the members of the Sheriff's Department pursued a meritless criminal investigation against her after she won her husband's return. He died in August 2006 at age 66.

Full Article and Source:
Jury Awards $2.5M to Widow in False Elder Abuse Case