Family members of senior citizens at the center of a controversy surrounding the Nevada guardianship system say their pleas for help to then-attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto, now a U.S. Senate candidate, were ignored for political reasons.
The family members accuse Jared Shafer, a former Clark County, Nev., official who runs a private guardianship firm, of bilking family members’ estates of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Shafer brushed off threats of legal action by invoking his connections to Masto, the Democratic candidate for Senate hoping to replace Harry Reid.
“Jared Shafer knew that Masto would never take a report” due to her family’s ties to Shafer, said Charles Pascal, whose mother-in-law died under Shafer’s care, in a Tuesday interview. “Why can these guardians do these things? They can do these things because they believe that no action will be taken.”
Nevada’s guardianship program has sparked controversy over allegations by the families of state wards that court-appointed guardians, who assume control over the estates of the elderly and indigent, extract excessive fees without providing basic levels of care.
If you think it sounds bad in a macro sense, the details will horrify you.
Rebecca Schultz, Olvera’s daughter says that Shafer billed her father’s estate for thousands of dollars in excessive and unsupported expenses. Those included payments to a case manager since imprisoned on felony charges of abusing the elderly after she was found to have stolen from state wards in her care and pawned their belongings.
A California judge terminated Shafer’s guardianship of Olvera in 2013, but not before Shafer billed the estate for another $240,000 in legal fees.
No one has yet alleged that Cortez Masto was getting a cut from what was embezzled from wards of the state but it is very clear that the abuse was reported to her and she did nothing.
Source:
Harry Reid Protege Cortez-Masto Let Family Friend Pillage Elderly
Also:
See:
NASGA: Lupe Olvera, NV/CA Victim
NASGA: Marcy E. Dudeck, NV/CA Victim
4 comments:
These are short and powerful ads and I hope the public is paying attention.
These commercials do my heart good.
This IS a political issue, and I'm so glad that these ads bring importance to the subject of guardian abuse.
The elections are over, but the guardianship problems persist.
While the new laws will change the hoops and hurdles of the guardianship legal process, these will not alter outcomes - they will only change the process of getting there.
Real and meaningful change in guardianship will not occur until those at the top - the judges - have the integrity and honesty to make the decisions necessary for all wards and their assets to be protected from the pecuniary interests of others.
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