For eight years, 97-year-old Grace Watanabee called the Symphony Residences of Lincoln Park home.
But
Watanabee has been removed from the senior living facility, after Cook
County authorities say several employees stole more than a half a
million dollars from her bank account.
The accusations have stunned some residents.
"I feel like that shouldn’t have happened there," resident Peter Brown said.
“I’ve never seen such widespread corruption at a nursing home before," acting Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert said.
The
Cook County’s Public Guardian office had been the ones to discover the
alleged thefts, when Watanabee’s banking institution reached out to
them.
"This was a woman who made
very modest withdrawals, for years and years," Golbert said. "And then
all of a sudden checks for tens of thousands of dollars started going
out to strangers."
The public guardian says the
employees wrote checks for as much as $25,000 to $50,000 at any given
time and copies of those checks have been included in a lawsuit against
those employees and the parent company of Symphony Residences.
“The
employees ranged from the very top of the finance manager to the
activities director to the hairdresser at the nursing home to the
receptionist,” Golbert said.
Watanabee
suffers from dementia and the county’s public guardian has been
watching over her because the 97-year-old has no surviving relatives.
In statement, a Symphony
spokesperson said “the employees suspected of involvement are no longer
employed at the facility and all staff were retrained in company
policies relating to receiving gifts from residents and their families.
The team at the residences has done everything in its power to prevent
this from happening again.”
“Ms. Watanabee had no family visiting, so she was vulnerable so that is how this happened,” Golbert said.
Full Article & Source:
Woman, 97, Bilked Out of Thousands of Dollars by Retirement Home Workers, Authorities Say
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