Steve Miller: Isolate, Medicate, Steal the Estate

Three Secrets Behind The Ongoing Stories Of Guardianship Fraud In Nevada And The Political Corruption That Enables The Scams To Continue Unabated

When INSIDE VEGAS stories get stuck in Nevada's judicial or political mud and progress seems at a stand still, I sometimes reveal a few behind the scenes secrets to try to jump start long needed action. This is one of those times.

In the ad nauseam story of local private guardian Jared E. Shafer, and the Clark County Family Court judges who enable him, many readers keep asking the same questions; "Why haven't these guys been prosecuted by the Clark County DA, Nevada AG, or US DOJ for (allegedly) exploiting wealthy court appointed elderly and disabled wards? And where's the Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission when we need them to go after the judges?" The following information may help answer these questions, but don't expect to be satisfied.

SECRET #1, Shafer's private files:
In October 2013, sixty pounds of original documents reportedly disappeared from the office of Professional Fiduciary Services of Nevada, Inc. (PFSN) on Pecos Road in Henderson. Without my prior knowledge, the documents packed in large cardboard banker's boxes mysteriously appeared on the public sidewalk in front of my house. When I first saw the unsealed boxes sitting there, I looked inside. They contained what I as an investigative commentator considered to be a treasure trove of potentially incriminating evidence about Jared Shafer whom I had been writing about since 1999. Included was an extensive file about what appeared to be an exploitative guardianship of multi-millionaire heiress Leann Peccole Goorjian. I never met Ms. Goorjian though I knew her late father Bill, and several of her closest friends, so I was very intrigued.

The documents and their source (whom I later confirmed) are protected under NRS 49.275, the Nevada Reporter's Shield Law.

I have waited until now to reveal the document's existence based on whether my having shared portions of them with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Abuse and Neglect Detail, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, and federal law enforcement authorities would hopefully inspire comprehensive investigations into what I believe is wide spread criminal guardianship fraud perpetrated against wealthy Southern Nevada retirees and disabled people. So far, the criminal investigations that have occurred were only local and yielded prosecutions of lower level operatives (low hanging fruit), while those who many believe are the masterminds - including several judges - have been allowed to remain unscathed.

The boxes placed on the public sidewalk contained hundreds of what appeared to me to be highly incriminating documents from Shafer's office including canceled checks, handwritten notes, and bank statements pertaining to the court ordered guardianships of a number of hapless, but wealthy, Las Vegas residents including the files of Leanne Peccole Goorjain who died in 2008 at age 51 while under the guardianship of Jared Shafer. After her death, his private records reflect a total of $432,043.00 Shafer paid to himself in "fees" starting with his first self-payment of $294,543.00 on August 4, 2009, eighteen months after Leann passed away,along with two payments of $12,500.00 each, one on March 28, 2013, and another on April 19, 2013, again for "fees." This does not include tens of thousands of dollars Shafer paid over a five year period to his personal attorneys including $4,230 to Elyse Tyrell, accountants, business partners, and other cronies for their "services" to the deceased woman. Here are just two examples of confidential documents from Shafer's office

Based on my knowledge of the Peccole family's good name and Leann's esteemed relatives who included a Clark County Commissioner and Sheriff, Nevada State Senator, and a billion dollar family owned land development company, and after the documents revealed that the majority of her personal holdings including a two million dollar hillside home somehow became the property of Jared Shafer, with full documentation in hand, I confidently authored the November 18, 2013, INSIDE VEGAS column "Grave Robbery Under Color Of Law."

SECRET #2, It's all legal if a judge approves:
Several months after my column appeared on AmericanMafia.com, I received an unsolicited email from CBS Sixty Minutes Senior Producer Bob Anderson.

He said he wanted to speak with me in confidence regarding my Leann Peccole Goorjian column.

The day following our brief phone conversation, Anderson flew to Las Vegas where we met for lunch. He asked me to promise not to talk about our meeting until after an initial Sixty Minutes segment on guardianship fraud had aired.

At the Macaroni Grill on West Sahara, Anderson grilled me about the Peccole case and specifically about her guardian Jared Shafer. Off the record I revealed that I had copies of confidential files from Shafer's office regarding the Peccole case and a number of others, and agreed to share copies of any pertinent documents with him and associate producer Aaron Weisz. Several weeks later, a CBS crew arrived in Las Vegas from New York. Their arrival did not escape local notice. I received a call from George Knapp, a reporter at the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas asking if I knew why Sixty Minutes was snooping around town asking about Jared Shafer. I said I had no comment.

Anderson and I secretly met several more times during the spring and summer of 2014 where he told me of his progress. He said he had obtained an in-prison interview with Patience Bristol, Shafer's assistant who had been convicted of elder exploitation, and was planning a possible "ambush" interview with Shafer at his Pecos Rd. office, a tactic Sixty Minutes is famous for. I was very excited to be a part of exposing what I considered immoral and illegal behavior, and eagerly awaited the planned October 2014 airing of Anderson's first-in-a-series Sixty Minutes story.

In September 2014, I received a call from Anderson. He sounded very despondent. I was told that the CBS News attorneys in New York thoroughly vetted his story and advised that no Nevada laws had been broken in any of the examples he planned to cite on Sixty Minutes. That in each case Anderson investigated, a Clark County Family Court Judge had signed off on Shafer's actions. ...

SECRET #3, "Shafer Laws," and those who passed or enforce them:
At this point you must be asking how this can take place in a civilized society?

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Isolate, Medicate, Steal the Estate