By Mardi Link
BELLAIRE — A professional guardian, appointed to oversee the needs of at least 40 vulnerable adults in six counties, is facing an embezzlement charge following a Michigan State Police investigation.
Vicky Hamlin-Rogers of Petoskey was charged in 86th District Court with a misdemeanor count of embezzlement of more than $200 and less than $1,000 from a vulnerable adult.
Hamlin-Rogers is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 5, court records show.
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Unguarded is a Traverse City Record-Eagle special project that, through nine months of reporting from courthouses spread across Michigan, prov… |
The family of a 77-year-old Elmira man has for two years been at odds with Hamlin-Rogers concerning expenses and $23,000 they say hasn’t been accounted for following the sale of a portion of their father’s land.
The Dobrzelewski family, some of whom live in Ohio, previously filed paperwork with the Antrim County Probate Court, records show, questioning expenses Hamlin-Rogers incurred when she served as their father’s court-appointed conservator.
“I don’t know anything yet,” Hamlin-Rogers said in a text message Wednesday, when asked about the charge.
She previously denied any wrongdoing.
The Record-Eagle also reached out to Robert Banner, an Emmet County attorney who previously represented Hamlin-Rogers in an unrelated contested guardianship in Charlevoix County, although Banner’s office said he was not representing Hamlin-Rogers in the Antrim County case.
Last year, Antrim County Prosecutor James Rossiter said he was reviewing a state police investigation into accusations of embezzlement, passed to his office in October 2021, to determine whether to press criminal charges in the case.
Staff with Rossiter’s office confirmed Wednesday that an assistant prosecutor, Angela Ferrara, was handling the case. Ferrara did not return calls seeking comment.
The expenses questioned by the Dobrzelewski family include home repairs and shopping trips to Walmart, as previously reported, and which only came to light when Hamlin-Rogers was removed as conservator in favor of one of the elderly man’s adult children.
The Dobrzelewskis have so far declined to comment publicly on the specifics of the case, but said they continue to hope their father’s guardianship ordeal might be instructive for fixing the state’s broken probate court system.
“The current system provides easy opportunity for the exploitation of our most vulnerable population by the very courts and conservators and/or guardians charged with protecting them,” the family previously told the Record-Eagle in an emailed statement.
“Many of the most vulnerable have no capability to challenge the fiduciary decisions and accountings made by conservators and/or guardians,” the family said.
Their father is medically vulnerable, court records show, and the Record-Eagle is not naming him in this story to protect his privacy.
Hamlin-Rogers is a professional guardian based in Emmet County. She has more than 40 wards between Emmet, Otsego, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Grand Traverse and Antrim probate courts.
In Charlevoix, the Record-Eagle previously found Hamlin-Rogers had expensed $20,000 for “home repairs” in another conservatorship, as previously reported — not unlike some of the expenses flagged by the Dobrzelewskis in Antrim County.
Record-Eagle reporters in August 2021, as part of the Unguarded project, began examining records in more than a dozen Michigan’s probate courts, finding a steady stream of issues ranging from family isolation to outright theft.
Previously reported stories in the continuing Unguarded series involved a range of people of means and those on fixed incomes, people who live independently and those who require residential care, those with close family members and those without, but all had one fact in common: A judicial decision meant to protect the individual by the appointment of a guardian or conservator.
Many guardians and conservators serve in those roles without ever running afoul of the law, but the vulnerable adults involved have little control over some of the most important decisions in their lives — such as where they live, who they can see, and how their savings are spent.
Decades of reform attempts by governors, attorneys general and legislators previously failed to alter the Michigan judiciary, which is charged with overseeing these guardianships.
That may be changing, however.
In October, Michigan’s House of Representatives passed a package of legislation to create an Office of State Guardian in what supporters say would be a first step toward reforming a problematic probate court system.
A state guardian, with appropriate staff and funding, could provide a layer of needed oversight, Rep. Betsy Coffia, D-Traverse City, a sponsor of one of the guardianship bills, previously said.
“While many guardians and conservators act in good faith, the truth is 73,000 seniors and vulnerable adults are financially and otherwise abused each year — including some disturbing cases in northern Michigan,” Coffia said.
Adding an Office of State Guardian was also one of the recommendations of the Elder Abuse Task Force, members of which were appointed by state Attorney General Dana Nessel and pulled from more than 50 organizations and state offices.
The bills are expected to be considered by the state Senate when it returns in January.
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GUARDIANSHIP: Professional guardian charged with embezzlement
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