Center Point couple accused of stealing $93K from grandparent

By KCRG Staff 

LINN COUNTY, Iowa (KCRG) - A Center Point couple is accused of stealing more than $93,000 from one of their grandmothers.

Aarika and Richard Ortega are both charged with theft and financial exploitation of an older person, money laundering and credit card fraud.

A criminal complaint says Aarika became her grandmother’s guardian in November of 2025.

By March, she had put her grandmother in assisted living and transferred $25,000 out of her account as a “wage” for taking care of her.

The Linn County Sheriff’s Office says they continued to take from the account. Charges included a new dirt bike and pickup truck, repairing a four-wheeler and a trip to a St. Louis Cardinals game, among other charges.

Both are being held at the Linn County Jail.

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Center Point couple accused of stealing $93K from grandparent 

Leelanau County Man to Stand Trial on Embezzlement Charges

LANSING — On Wednesday, in the 80^th District Court in Harrison, Donovan Leonard, 34, of Cedar, was bound over to stand trial on felony charges of embezzlement, forgery, uttering and publishing, and failure to file taxes, announced Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. The case was investigated by the Michigan Department of Attorney General, which then charged Leonard in August of this year.

In 2023, Leonard obtained power of attorney over an elderly man, with whom he’d been close for many years, who was at that time suffering from dementia. It is alleged that Leonard soon after sold off assets belonging to the man and took more than $100,000 from his bank accounts. Leonard allegedly created and filed with the probate court false receipts to justify the stolen sums.

“Power of attorney is a significant legal authority one person can grant to another in a time of need, but it is not a license to steal,” said Attorney General Nessel. “Vulnerable and elderly Michigan residents often must rely on a trusted relative or friend to help manage their finances or other affairs. When that trust and legal privilege is abused, my office will act to hold unscrupulous actors accountable.”

Leonard is charged with:

• 1 count of Embezzlement from a Vulnerable Adult - $100,000 or more, a 20-year felony;
• 1 count of Embezzlement by an Agent - $100,000 or more, a 20-year felony;
• 1 count of Forgery, a 14-year felony;
• 1 count of Uttering and Publishing, a 14-year felony; and
• 2 counts of Taxes – Failure to File, a 5-year felony.

Leonard will next appear before Judge Tara S. Hovey in the 55^th Circuit Court in Clare County.

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Please note: For all criminal proceedings, a criminal charge is merely an allegation. The defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The Department does not provide booking photos. 

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Leelanau County Man to Stand Trial on Embezzlement Charges

I helped a billionaire couple tell their kids they’d already received their inheritance. They didn’t take it well

By Christina Wing 

On October 20, Wells Fargo released a study of affluent families that every parent with an estate plan should read.

Based on a survey of 800 Baby Boomers and 800 Gen X or Millennial children, the researchers found that 61% of adult children said inheritance had already caused problems in their families, from hurt feelings and arguments over fairness to estrangement and legal disputes. Only 29% of older parents said the same. Among the adult children, 49% believed inheritance conversations have the potential to trigger family conflict—which is one reason so many people avoid having them.

My book, Unspeakable, came out the same day as the survey, and that data provided an illustration of the book’s core idea in the book: Many families are avoiding conversations because they’re afraid of discomfort, even if this avoidance can cause harm. Estate planning is just one of the topics I cover in Unspeakable, but as I’ve traveled to give talks and answer questions about the book, it’s one that’s coming up most frequently.

In my work advising family businesses, I see this avoidance in various forms. In many cases, older parents hire my firm to help them inform their children about their estate plans. This is complicated work, but I find it fulfilling because I believe that in most cases, relationships become better when financial secrets are brought out into the open.

To help illustrate this, let me tell you about my work with a couple I’ll call Jose and Natalia.

Born and raised in Latin America, Jose was educated as an accountant and worked for investment banks before founding a wildly successful private equity firm. The couple, who now live in San Francisco and are in their eighties, have built substantial wealth. Their assets total over $1 billion.

They have four children in their fifties, all well-educated and financially independent. Years ago the parents gave each child a significant gift—about $25 million each. The family had never discussed the provisions of Jose and Natalia’s will, but the children have always assumed they would inherit most of the estate when the parents die.

Here’s the secret: They won’t. The children will be given lifetime use of the family’s home, which are to be placed in a trust with maintenance funds. But everything else will be used to fund a charitable foundation devoted to mental health and education programs, run by an outside adviser. Decisions will be guided by their eleven grandchildren, now in their twenties—who had no idea they’ll inherit this responsibility. Additionally, Jose has chosen his longtime executive assistant to vote his company shares going forward and has left her a substantial bequest—about $10 million at his death and $1 million a year thereafter.

Although very few families have this kind of wealth, many take the same secretive approach to estate planning. Children are afraid to ask about wills because they don’t want to appear greedy. Parents are reluctant to talk about them because they’re afraid the children will be disappointed. Neither party wants to initiate a conversation that’s bound to feel morbid.

Yet these conversations are becoming more urgent as older generations prepare to pass on enormous amounts of wealth. UBS’s 2025 Global Wealth Report estimates that more than $83 trillion will change hands worldwide over the next 20 to 25 years, passing between spouses and down to children. A 2025 Fidelity survey of U.S. parents age 55 and older with at least $500,000 in investable assets found that 70 percent had a will or estate plan, but 68 percent hadn’t shared inheritance details with their children. The silence risks leaving heirs unprepared for the responsibilities they’ll inherit with those assets—and the lack of transparency can also imperil relationships.

Jose was torn about how open to be with his family about estate planning. “I know at least one of my children will have a real problem with [my plan], and I don’t feel like dealing with the conflict,” Jose told me. (To protect client confidentiality, in addition to using pseudonyms, I’ve changed several other identifying biographical details in describing his family.) Over many months I tried to convince them to have a more open and candid conversation with their children about their plans. Here’s a condensed version of the points I made:

• Because Jose is older than Natalia, he’s likely to die first. If they don’t deal with this before he dies, they’re leaving a mess for Natalia, and the children might lean on her to change her will after Jose is gone.
• If the children are surprised by this estate plan, there’s a chance they’ll sue. The provisions involving Jose’s assistant are especially likely to cause the children to consult a lawyer.
• Discussing your plan with your children isn’t the same as debating it—you’re not giving them a vote. The goal should be to inform them, reduce surprise, limit conflict, head off litigation, and help the grandchildren prepare for their role in the new foundation.

Even as I made these arguments, I was sympathetic to their viewpoint. In my own family, we haven’t always been direct about what we wish to happen when we die. When my grandparents died, we knew they wanted to be cremated, but we’d never discussed what they hoped we’d do with the ashes—so their remains sat in a closet in my home for seven years. (We eventually scattered their ashes in the places we thought each of them would’ve picked.) When my father died, I had no clue what was in his estate plan or where he wanted to be buried. His secrecy added stress on top of the grief I felt, and it’s part of the reason why, in both my work and my personal life, I urge people to communicate openly about their final wishes.

The Topic So Many of Us Avoid

I see evidence of our reluctance to deal with death planning in other areas of my professional life. I’m a faculty member at Harvard Business School, and most of the MBA students I teach are in their late twenties. Each fall I teach a class on family enterprises that touches on estate planning, and during the first meeting I ask a simple question: “How many of you have a will?” Around five percent of the students raise their hands. Then I ask a follow-up question: “How many of you have children?” About 20 percent raise their hands. That always blows my mind. If you have a child but don’t have a will with guardianship provisions, you’re allowing the state to decide who will raise your children if you and your spouse die. Students who get into HBS are hyper-responsible rule-followers, and it’s telling that so many of them have skipped over estate planning—which I consider an integral part of being an adult.

According to Gallup, in 2020 just 46 percent of Americans had a will in place. The numbers were higher for older, more affluent, and white people, with just 28 percent of nonwhite adults and 20 percent of people under thirty reporting they have an estate plan in place. I sometimes meet young married couples who have a prenuptial agreement but no wills. As I tell them, “So you have a plan in case you divorce, which you hope won’t happen, but you don’t have a plan for what happens when you die, which is guaranteed to happen?” That combination is irrational, but it’s not unusual when you mix the topics of money and death.

Even realists who recognize their mortality tend to avoid talking about it because death is a downer. Additionally, many of us don’t like talking about money under any circumstance—in many families, the subject is taboo—and estate planning invariably involves money. Finally, there’s a fundamental misconception that estate planning is an expensive process that’s necessary only for older and wealthier people. This view is completely wrong. If you own anything of value or have taken on debt, you should have a will. If you have pets, you need a will to spell out who becomes responsible. Ideally, young people should get a simple will as soon as they reach the age of eighteen. Many states have made it nearly automatic for people to register to vote or become organ donors when they get their driver’s license, and in a perfect world, creating a simple will would become part of the process too.

I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t help people construct the legal documents that are the end result of estate planning. Instead, I urge them to communicate more openly about the process. Here are the general points I make in my teaching and advisory work on this:

• Silence shifts burdens onto survivors. When people avoid talking about death, they leave loved ones to make decisions under stress—often without guidance, context, or clarity about intentions. Introduce a conversation about it this way: “I don’t want you to have to guess what I wanted.”
• Estate planning involves communication, values, and emotions. Documents matter, but conversations about relationships, priorities, and trade-offs are what allow others to act with confidence after someone is gone.
• Talk early, revisit often, and be willing to go slowly or repeat yourself. Life events—marriage, divorce, illness, business changes—alter what people want. Regular conversations prevent outdated plans from creating confusion or conflict. (My husband and I revisit our estate plan every five years, if not more frequently.) And remember that some people find conversations about finances to be confusing, so try to keep it simple and repeat key points until they’re understood.
• Frame these discussions as acts of care, not negativity. Talking about death and inheritance is a way of protecting relationships, preserving dignity, and reducing uncertainty for those who will live with the consequences.

Helping One Family Have This Conversation

I put that advice into practice when Jose, Natalia, and I met with their four adult children in 2025 to bring their estate plan out into the open. We met over two days, for a total of sixteen hours, at the family’s home. Going into the meeting, I’d expected the children to react negatively to the revelation that they would inherit no additional money—and they did. In fact, their emotional reactions dominated the meetings. Natalia and her daughters cried. The sons each periodically walked out to cool off. We’d planned a group dinner at the end of the first day, but the sons refused to attend.

The children were incensed that their parents made such important decisions without their input. They were hurt by the sharp constraints the parents put on how involved the children could be in the new foundation (reserving the bigger roles for younger grandchildren). They suspected Jose’s assistant had manipulated him into giving her such an influential role. They decried their parents as “sneaky” for having carried this secret around for years. Even the provision that left the family’s homes to the children struck them as manipulative; in their view, by forcing them to share the homes, the parents were trying to coerce the children to spend time together after their death.

Jose and Natalia left the meeting with mixed emotions. They were disappointed in the children’s reactions—in particular, that they seemed unappreciative of the $25 million gift each had already received. They were disappointed that instead of accepting the news, the children focused on revisiting the decisions, repeatedly asking, “Is this really final?”

At the same time, both Jose and Natalia felt an overwhelming sense of relief to have their estate plan finally out in the open. If Jose dies before Natalia, she will no longer be left to explain these choices by herself. Now that the family understands that most of the assets will go to a foundation that will largely be controlled by the grandchildren, everyone involved can begin training the young people for their new roles.

Like many of the situations I face with complex estates, this one doesn’t contain a “happily ever after,” but it does qualify as “better than it was before.” And I have hope that the family will heal because everyone is still alive to discuss the decisions that the parents have made.

Why This Matters Beyond One Family

How families handle this affects more than the people named in the will. Cerulli Associates estimates that $124 trillion will change hands in the U.S. through 2048, and much of it sits inside family businesses that employ people and support their communities. In the new Wells Fargo study, among a subset of respondents whose families own businesses, two-thirds of business owners’ adult children expected the company to pass to them or their siblings, but fewer than one in five owners actually planned to do that. Most expected to sell the business or wind it down instead of passing it on to their families. That’s a 48-point gap between what parents are planning and what their children are counting on, and in many families, nobody has said it out loud. When that kind of surprise comes out after a death, it can lead to lawsuits and rushed sales, and employees end up paying for a conversation that never happened. That’s why I’d like to see more parents start these conversations while they can still explain their choices, and more children feel free to ask one simple question: “What is my responsibility?”

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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I helped a billionaire couple tell their kids they’d already received their inheritance. They didn’t take it well 

Senate Passes Culver’s Alice’s Law and Companion Bill to Protect Care-Dependent Pennsylvanians

HARRISBURG – Legislation sponsored by Sen. Lynda Schlegel Culver (R-27) to establish a statewide Older Adult Abuse Registry and strengthen penalties for crimes against care-dependent people has passed the Senate and now advances to the House of Representatives.

Senate Bill 807, known as Alice’s Law, would establish the registry as an additional safeguard to help prevent individuals who abuse older adults from moving between caregiving positions. Senate Bill 1415 which builds on the same initiative, would increase penalties for certain abuse, neglect and institutional sexual assault offenses against care-dependent people.

“Senate passage of these bills is an important step toward strengthening protections for people who depend on others for care,” Culver said. “Families deserve confidence that their loved ones will be treated with dignity and that those who harm them will be held properly accountable. I appreciate my colleagues’ support and Lynn Fiedler’s continued advocacy in her mother’s memory.”

Alice’s Law is named in memory of Alice Longenberger, who endured abuse while receiving care at a facility. Her daughter, Lynn Fiedler, founded Journey to Justice to raise awareness of elder abuse and advocate for stronger protections for older and care-dependent Pennsylvanians.

Senate Bill 807 would place responsibility for establishing and maintaining the registry with the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, in consultation with the departments of Aging and Health. It would establish criteria for placement on the registry, reporting requirements related to criminal convictions, and notice and an opportunity for administrative review before an individual is placed on the registry.

Senate Bill 1415 would complement those safeguards by strengthening criminal penalties, including making certain abuse and neglect offenses third-degree felonies and increasing the penalty for institutional sexual assault by a caretaker to a second-degree felony.

Both bills now advance to the House of Representatives for consideration.

CONTACT: Sam Clepper 

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Senate Passes Culver’s Alice’s Law and Companion Bill to Protect Care-Dependent Pennsylvanians 

Caretaker at senior living facility accused of recording man trying to kill his wife

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Caretaker at senior living facility accused of recording man trying to kill his wife 

South Barrington memory care worker charged with recording naked patient, sharing videos: police

The wife of the memory care resident who was allegedly recorded by a worker told the I-Team that her trust was exploited and broken. 

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South Barrington memory care worker charged with recording naked patient, sharing videos: police

What North Dakota’s new state agency does for guardianship, families and vulnerable adults

By Atticus Pead

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - North Dakota’s new Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship (OGC) opened April 1 and is already busy, with more than 80 referrals in its first months of operation.

Director Rachel Sinness said her six-person team has received referrals from courts, state agencies, family members and even people under guardianship themselves.

The office was created by lawmakers under Senate Bill 2029 in the 2025 session.

Sinness said it’s rare for the work to exist as its own agency — in most other states, guardianship oversight sits inside Health and Human Services or the court system. North Dakota’s office operates independently.

Unlike the prior court monitoring program under the judiciary, which only took court referrals, the new office also takes complaints from others.

“We also take those from the public and other agencies,” Sinness said. “If a family member is concerned a guardian is exploiting a loved one, that individual can also call our office and ask that we take up an investigation.”

Sinness described the office as “a one-stop shop for guardianship and conservatorship.” Guardians and conservators are required to file an annual report with the court. When judges spot discrepancies, they can refer the case to OGC for review.

Her team includes a legal director, two investigators called guardianship case monitors, a fiscal officer who handles state funding sources and eligibility, and an administrative assistant. 

The office also works with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) under the Attorney General’s office on cases needing further examination.

Sinness said many of the 80-plus referrals have been handled in-house. Several have resulted in recommendations to the district court where the guardianship originated, and some have been referred to BCI.

Most cases so far involve small paperwork issues, like a missing line item on an annual report, and can be resolved fairly quickly, Sinness said.

Sinness came to the role in November 2025, while the rest of the staff was hired in late March and early April. Before leading OGC, she worked as an assistant attorney general in the North Dakota Attorney General’s office focused on higher education. 

She said the office provides oversight to ensure guardians and conservators follow strict standards so protected individuals maintain autonomy and basic rights, and decisions are made as they would make them themselves.

“We’re available by telephone for any questions pertaining to guardianship and conservatorship whatsoever,” she said.

Find more information and resources on their website.

For now, the office is working on the 14th floor of the Capitol, but plans to move to the Liberty Memorial Building in the future. 

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What North Dakota’s new state agency does for guardianship, families and vulnerable adults 

Romance scammers stole $9M from elderly to buy jewels, Lamborghini

By Marc Ramirez 

Jewelry seized during the May 2026 arrests in Virginia of two Ghanian twin brothers, 22-year-old Jamal and Kamal Abubakari. The Abubakaris were accused of being part of an international crime network that used romance fraud schemes to bilk mostly elderly Americans out of more than $9 million. USA TODAY Network, Reuters

The victims thought they had found romance and love – but instead were deceived by a ruse that left their hopes dashed and their savings accounts depleted. 

Now, twin brothers from Ghana and an American woman have admitted their part in an international crime network that used the fake romance schemes to bilk dozens of victims, most of them elderly Americans, out of more than $9 million in money and other items.

Jamal and Kamal Abubakari, both 22, of Ghana, and Amanda Joy Opoku-Boachie, 53, of Kula, Hawaii, pleaded guilty this month to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio said in a news release. 

The fraud took place from July 2024 to April 2026, with victims spread across 25 U.S. states as well as in Germany and Austria. According to the documents, the defendants used dating websites and social media platforms to build personal and often romantic relationships with their victims, in some cases using artificial-intelligence-driven video to remotely interact with them under fake personas. 

Swayed by false stories from people they hadn’t actually met in person, the victims wired money to financial accounts controlled by third-party co-conspirators. The purposes for which the defendants said they allegedly needed funds included medical emergencies, investment opportunities or travel costs to visit the victims, documents said. 

“The consequences of this conduct are all-encompassing,” prosecutors said. “Victims report that they are left with absolutely nothing to sustain their lives going forward after a lifetime of work and saving. In addition, individual victims are ashamed and deprived of the trust they once had in their fellow human beings.”

As part of their plea agreement, the three defendants forfeited jewelry seized by investigators during their arrests, including luxury timepieces, rings, earrings, medallions and chains, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Each faces a maximum federal 20-year term at sentencing, scheduled for February. 

Jamal Abubakari, aka Jamal Abubakar, was also known as Arrangement, court documents said, while Kamal Abubakari, aka Kamal Abubakar, went by the name Lancaster. Opoku-Boachie had several aliases including Amanda Joy Glum and Amanda Joy Kessei Bierman. 

Other co-conspirators are awaiting extradition from Ghana, where seized assets included a Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and a Tesla Cybertruck, federal authorities said. In all, they said, more than 130 victims were defrauded. 

The case is being conducted under the Elder Justice Initiative Program created by the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act of 2017, designed to combat elder abuse, neglect, financial fraud and other scams targeting the nation’s older population.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Romance scammers stole $9M from elderly to buy jewels, Lamborghini 

Reporting by Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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Romance scammers stole $9M from elderly to buy jewels, Lamborghini 

Family Files Elder Abuse Lawsuit Against In-Home Care Provider Following Death of 87-Year-Old Woman

News provided by

Siegal & Richardson, LLP

Lawsuit alleges caregiver negligence resulted in multiple fractures, severe pain, and suffering during elderly woman's final weeks

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- A San Francisco court will soon be asked to determine the extent of the neglect and abuse that a family alleges an in-home care attendant inflicted upon an elderly woman, resulting in devastating injuries and contributing to her painful death.

What should have been a time of comfort, dignity, and compassionate care became a nightmare for 87-year-old June Cohen and her family. 

The lawsuit, Matt Cohen v. Aviva In Home Care, was brought by a San Francisco Bay Area family who entrusted the care of their elderly mother to a professional in-home care provider. Instead of receiving the safety and protection she desperately needed, Mrs. Cohen allegedly suffered catastrophic injuries at the hands of the very caregiver hired to help her.

According to the lawsuit, on the night of August 10, 2026, an allegedly inexperienced home care attendant dropped Mrs. Cohen, aggravating a preexisting fracture and causing several additional fractures. The injuries left her suffering through the final weeks of her life in hospice care, where, according to the family's allegations, she endured excruciating pain before her death.

The complaint alleges that Aviva In Home Care violated its legal obligations under California's elder abuse laws, including provisions of the Welfare and Institutions Code, by failing to provide the level of care and protection owed to a vulnerable elderly woman.

For families across America, the case raises a deeply troubling question: When we place our aging parents in the hands of professional caregivers, how can we be certain they are safe?

As our population ages, millions of families face the difficult decision of entrusting their loved ones to outside caregivers. They do so believing these professionals will provide compassion, competence, and protection. But as the Cohen family's allegations illustrate, failures in elderly care can have heartbreaking and potentially fatal consequences.

The Cohen family is now seeking accountability through the courts, while their case serves as a sobering reminder of the importance of proper caregiver training, oversight, and the protection of our most vulnerable citizens.

A copy of the filed complaint is available to members of the media upon request.

Media Contact

Joel H. Siegal, Esq, Siegal & Richardson, LLP, 1 (510) 271-6720, press@moiralouisepr.com, https://siegalrichardsonlaw.com/

Moira Noiseux, MoiraLouisePR, 1 5107179923, press@moiralouisepr.com, moiralouisepr.com

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Family Files Elder Abuse Lawsuit Against In-Home Care Provider Following Death of 87-Year-Old Woman