By Mardi Link
PETOSKEY — A court-appointed conservator who pleaded guilty to two counts of felony embezzlement as part of a plea agreement with the Emmet County Prosecutor’s Office, is scheduled to be sentenced July 19 in 57th Circuit Court.
Elise Page of Harbor Springs is accused of embezzling more than $17,000 from bank accounts belonging to two vulnerable adults assigned to her by the Emmet County Probate Court.
The missing funds came to light last fall during a months-long investigation by the Harbor Springs Police Department and the Petoskey Department of Public Safety.
Page was arraigned May 3.
Funds went missing from the accounts of George Pappas, a 95-year-old World War II veteran of Harbor Springs and Isiah Gill of Petoskey, within months of Page being assigned to handle their finances, court records show.
Conservators are appointed by the probate court to administer a person’s financial affairs when, because of age, injury or illness, a judge decides they are no longer able to handle these tasks themselves.
A related court appointment, a guardianship, is made by the court when a judge determines someone cannot handle their own housing or medical decisions.
Both roles have long been the subject of scrutiny by Michigan officials — most recently in hearings before the state’s House Judiciary Committee, where Attorney General Dana Nessel and others gave testimony on proposed reforms.
Michigan law states a probate court judge can appoint anyone they like to be a conservator or a guardian, so long as the person is older than 18 and “competent,” though critics of the system say the term is not well defined.
Systemic oversight deficiencies of probate court appointments have been acknowledged by lawmakers for decades.
Each probate court sets many of its own procedural rules and there is no requirement that a guardian or conservator disclose whether they have appointments in other counties. Critics say this makes it more difficult to identify conservators and guardians unfit to serve.
Without such a requirement, Emmet County officials would have had no way of knowing that Page had been appointed to serve as guardian for at least two vulnerable adults in Cheboygan County.
Page was later removed from those cases by Cheboygan County Probate Court Judge Daryl P. Vizina following an alert from Harbor Springs Police Chief Kyle Knight.
“There’s no official protocol for (law enforcement) as far as letting another court know but once I got wind that she was a conservator over there, I called and shared my concerns,” Knight said.
Prosecutor James Linderman declined to discuss the Page case, citing the upcoming sentencing hearing, but said court staff and law enforcement officers do try to communicate with each other on possible criminality from county to county.
Linderman said the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan has a forum where prosecutors can communicate with each other and such alerts can also be shared there.
“We also might find something by running a CCH on LEIN,” Linderman said.
A CCH is computerized criminal history and LEIN is the Michigan Law Enforcement Information Network accessible only to criminal justice agencies.
Michigan does not require certification or background checks of guardians or conservators — an oversight that proposed legislation, if passed, might remedy but only if expanded to include civil litigation.
Emmet County Probate Register Deb Niswander did request a criminal background check on Page which returned no criminal convictions, records show.
An investigation by the Record-Eagle, however, revealed a history of financial lawsuits filed against Page in Emmet County’s 90th District Court going back to 2004.
Police documents show Page spent about $4,000 of Pappas’ money on retail purchases like electronic cigarettes and women’s clothing and withdrew another $10,000 in cash from his account just weeks after being named his conservator.
Approximately $4,000 was missing from Gill’s account, court records show.
Page has since pleaded guilty to two felony counts of embezzlement of more than $1,000 and less than $20,000, from a vulnerable adult, which each carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.
Page must also pay restitution of $17,333.88 as part of the plea deal, court records show.
In exchange for the plea agreement, several charges of embezzlement and using a computer to commit a crime were dismissed, records show.
Jonathan Steffy, listed in court records as Page’s attorney, did not return calls seeking comment.
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