Growing number of elder abuse reports in Bucks and Pennsylvania involve family members

Financial exploitation is among the most frequent elder abuse allegations reported in Bucks County and beyond, accounting for nearly one-third of abuse reports locally and in Pennsylvania. The recent arrests of the Weaver family in Quakertown, who are accused of neglecting 84-year-old Albert Weaver Sr. and misusing more than $100,000 of his money, is the latest local example of the growing trend.

When a longtime bank customer applied for a $12,000 loan, Thomas Maclin asked him the usual procedural questions, including what he planned to do with the money.

The answers made Maclin suspicious. The customer, who was in his 70s, told Maclin that he won a lottery, but he needed to pay the taxes upfront before he could get the cash.

Maclin immediately recognized the man was getting scammed. But while his boss at the time encouraged employees to be vigilant for scams targeting older customers, they weren’t told what they should do if they suspect something.

Maclin tried to talk the customer out of the loan, but the man wouldn’t change his mind. Since he met the bank’s lending guidelines, Maclin had to approve the loan.

The experience still weighs heavy on his mind five years later, said Maclin, who left that job and now is vice president of business development and manager at the Doylestown Borough branch of Monument Bank.

Financial exploitation has become one of the most frequent allegations of elder abuse in Bucks County and beyond, according to multiple studies and federal and state data. But its true extent remains largely unknown, under-reported and unstudied, much like elder abuse in general. According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, experts have reported that knowledge about elder abuse lags as much as two decades behind the fields of child abuse and domestic violence.

Current estimates are at least one in 10 people age 60 or older are victims of some kind of abuse or neglect, with financial exploitation the fastest growing abuse category, according to the National Center on Elder Abuse. Those numbers are expected to keep rising with nearly one in five people in the United States age 65 or older by 2030.

Studies cited older Americans as more frequent targets for abuse because of physical and cognitive impairments and social isolation. One study estimated people with dementia are at a 50 percent higher risk for abuse. A 2014 study of more than 4,000 adults age 60 and older found that seniors living with extended family are at an increased risk of abuse, particularly financial exploitation.

Bucks County authorities allege those risk factors were present in a 2016 death of an 84-year-old Quakertown man, who died 12 days after he was hospitalized with what one trauma care nurse described as the worst case of physical neglect she had seen in her career.

Albert Weaver Sr., who had Alzheimer’s disease, was treated for deep, infected bedsores that led to septic shock, as well as infections of the urinary tract and toenails, and severe malnutrition and dehydration at the time of his death, according to court documents. Hospital staff also found bruises and cuts on Weaver, according to court documents.

Last month, four people, including three of Weaver’s family members, were arrested on charges of allegedly neglecting him; three of the four are accused of spending nearly $150,000 of his money on items and services that did not benefit him.

Albert Weaver Jr., 52, daughter-in-law Virginia Weaver, 49, granddaughter Amanda Weaver, 26, and Amanda’s boyfriend James Dorney, 33, all of Quakertown, were charged March 28 with neglect of care of a dependent person and reckless endangering. Virginia Weaver faces an additional charge of theft; Amanda Weaver and Dorney face additional charges of theft and conspiracy.

Authorities allege that Virginia and Amanda Weaver and Dorney all were responsible for Weaver’s daily care; Amanda Weaver and Dorney lived with Weaver Sr. in his home.

After his death, authorities reviewed Weaver Sr.’s bank records and found that during the last three years of his life, his family spent nearly $147,000 on items and services that did not benefit him, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The items and services the family allegedly used the elder Weaver’s money for included satellite TV service for Weaver Jr. and his wife, alcohol highway safety school for Amanda Weaver and her brother, a car loan and insurance for Dorney, traffic and non-traffic tickets for family members, and a loan payment in Weaver Jr.’s name, according to authorities.

An intimate crime

The Weaver case is among the roughly 1,200 elder abuse reports Bucks County receives annually, a number that has jumped 60 percent over the last two years, driven mostly by allegations of financial fraud against senior citizens, according to Chuck Danfield, supervisor of the county’s older adult protective services unit in the Area Agency on Aging. About 20 percent of reports — 240 — were substantiated as abuse, where without intervention the senior was at risk for harm, Danfield said.

At least one out of every three elder abuse reports in Bucks County each year involve allegations of misuse or taking of assets belonging to an older adult, and such cases are referred to the Bucks County Crimes Against Older Adults Task Force, Danfield said. About half the time, a financial abuse investigation finds evidence of other types of abuse as well, such as neglect or verbal abuse, he added.

Faceless abusers — like the ones behind the lottery scheme that Maclin encountered — are still a problem, Danfield said. A particular pitfall he sees with older adults is scammers promising a potential romantic relationship, but before long making requests for money or requests they be added to bank accounts or asking a victim to co-sign a loan.

Often when the person finally reports the abuse, it’s too late.

“By the time we get the information, the money is long gone and it’s extremely hard for us to help them recover money,” Danfield said.

A growing number of abusers are people the older adult knows, often a family member, Danfield said. Many times, he said, the victim has given the abuser their power of attorney, a legal document gives a person the ability to make all financial decisions on behalf of another person who is incapacitated, including selling a house or stock, or obtaining a mortgage in the person’s name.

“We see that is where a lot of abuse occurs. The perpetrator spends the money in a place the other person wouldn’t be,” Danfield said. “A bed-bound person is not at Victoria’s Secret, going to outlet malls or going to Disney World.”

Danfield recalled a case where a man who had the power of attorney for his 80-something-year-old mother used her money to pay for construction of an in-ground swimming pool. When confronted, the man claimed his mother wanted the pool.

“As power of attorney, (you) have the right to spend the person’s money and assets for them,” Danfield said. “You can’t use the money to buy a pool, to take a trip, to buy expensive things you normally couldn’t afford.”

Older adults also are reluctant to admit they’ve been abused or scammed because they don’t want to appear incompetent, which could result in a loss of independence, Michael Bannon, director of Bucks County Consumer Protection. His department also has seen a rise in family-related allegations of financial exploitation involving older adults.

Family loyalty and fear of abandonment are factors that often keep victims from turning in family members abusing them, Bannon said.

“It’s so intimate, it’s usually hidden, and only people close to that senior citizen may recognize it,” he added.

More vigilance

Pennsylvania, which has the fifth-largest senior citizen population in the U.S., has seen elder abuse referrals double over the last decade, jumping from 13,444 in the 2007-08 fiscal year to 28,632 in 2016-17, according to Drew Wilburne, a state Department of Aging spokesman.

Financial exploitation along with caregiver neglect tied as the most frequent abuse referrals last year in Pennsylvania, with each reporting roughly 7,455 cases opened last year, Wilburne said. Caregiver neglect cases had a slightly higher substantiation rate than financial exploitation — 21 percent versus 17 percent.

Neither Pennsylvania nor neighbor New Jersey include employees of banks and other financial institutions among the entities with a legal mandate to report suspected elder abuse, though both states require employees in the health care, legal and social service field or anyone working in businesses that care for individuals over age 60 to make the reports.

The Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities has led education and training initiatives for financial institutions about how to prevent, recognize and respond to suspected elder financial exploitation, agency spokesman Ed Novak said. So far this fiscal year, the department has led 37 trainings for about 3,000 people in its latest program, Senior Safe, which helps financial investment professionals identify “red flags” of suspicious behavior of clients, Novak said.

Over the last five years, the department has expanded the reach of its Elder Investment Fraud and Financial Exploitation prevention program from medical professionals to other professions such as social workers, cosmetologists and pharmacists. The program offers training on identifying signs of financial abuse or exploitation and how to react, Novak said.

Recently, the department started a separate training program aimed at lawyers and accountants, and it has partnered with the state Department of Revenue to launch a program for tax preparers. The department also is working with the Department of State to promote the training through its professional oversight boards, Novak said.

Novak credited banks and credit unions as among those institutions on the forefront of efforts to better protect older adults from financial exploitation.

After his experience with the lottery scam at his previous bank, Maclin reached out to Bucks County Consumer Protection for advice on how he should handle such situations in the future with older customers. He ended up joining the Bucks County Crimes Against Older Adults Task Force, which has helped him shape fraud reporting guidelines at Monument.

At his branch, employees are trained to spot signs of fraud and ways they can intervene without violating legal obligations to keep customer information private, Maclin said. One way is employees attempt to isolate the senior customer and ask questions, including if they are being coerced into making a transaction. If an employee spots a red flag, the incident is reported to Maclin, who is designated as the person who files a report with the Bucks County Crimes Against Older Adults hotline, the entry point for a task force investigation.

But Maclin still sees a lack of formal employee training in senior fraud prevention and intervention in the banking industry, especially among smaller, independent banks. While employees are encouraged to be vigilant, there remains a disconnect in how to react and report suspicions, he said.

He added that a mandatory reporting requirement might make bank employees feel more comfortable about reporting suspicions. He suspects that part of the reluctance for employees to report suspicions may lie with the legal obligation of financial institutions to keep customer account information and transactions private.

Still, Bannon and Danfield both agreed that they have seen an uptick in referrals among financial institutions over the last five years.

Bucks County’s Area Agency on Aging is fielding 20 to 30 reports of suspected financial abuse a month from banks and credit unions, though family members remain the biggest source of financial abuse or exploitation reports, Danfield said.

Many big banks have developed dedicated fraud departments with someone responsible for making referrals, Danfield said, adding almost all the major banks have made a referral at some point to Bucks County’s hotline.

Danfield is among those advocates who would like to see financial institutions added to the state’s list of mandatory reporters involving elder abuse suspicions.

“It would benefit a lot of victims we never find out about,” he said.

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Growing number of elder abuse reports in Bucks and Pennsylvania involve family members