Disabled Alaskans sue state and appointed guardian for alleged financial abuse, neglect

By Rachel Cassandra

The Office of Public Advocacy in downtown Anchorage. Their deputy director Beth Goldstein is named as a defendant in a class action lawsuit alleging the state enabled neglect, financial abuse and other harms of disabled Alaskans. (Rachel Cassandra/Alaska Public Media)

Ten disabled Alaskans are suing the state and their state-appointed guardian in a class-action lawsuit that alleges financial abuse and neglect.

Under his business Cache Integrity, Thomas McDuffie was a private guardian responsible for more than 100 state-assigned wards between 2021 and 2023. The lawsuit alleges he neglected to serve the people in his care, all of whom are disabled, elderly or ill.

The lawsuit also names top officials with the state Office of Public Advocacy and the state’s Adult Protective Services unit as defendants.

Alaska’s public guardianship program is supposed to serve the state’s most vulnerable people by, among other things, making decisions for them about finances, benefits or healthcare. The state employs some public guardians, but the program has struggled with overburdened public guardians. McDuffie was a private guardian assigned public cases because of the staffing shortage. 

According to the lawsuit, McDuffie wasn’t paying their taxes, wasn’t finding adequate housing for some, failed to enroll them for public benefits and overpaid himself for his services. The lawsuit claims he left one person in the hospital unnecessarily for a year, racking up a bill of over $615,000.

Anchorage attorney Caitlin Shortell, who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the stories of how McDuffie failed his wards are endless. One of McDuffie’s wards was in a wheelchair and living in a condo when it flooded, leaving the floor warped and uneven, she said.

“Mr. McDuffie didn’t provide him enough food or pay his bills … and then failed to make a claim on the insurance for the flood damage, leaving this person malnourished, unable to really move around, even in his own home, and leaving him with property damage to his condominium,” Shortell said.

McDuffie also pooled his wards’ money together in a shared trust, Shortell said, and that makes unwinding the money he owes people extremely difficult.

“If you have hundreds of clients, and all of their money is pooled, how can you figure out whose money is whose?” Shortell said. “And that became much more complicated because of the lack of accurate bookkeeping and accounting.”

McDuffie is no longer a practicing guardian, as of the fall of 2023, and the state has reassigned his wards.

Reached by phone, McDuffie declined an interview request for this story.

Mary, whose last name is omitted to protect her privacy, was one of McDuffie’s wards and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Mary has dementia and was assigned to McDuffie in 2021.

As Mary’s guardian, McDuffie was in charge of her housing and financial decisions, which included managing her benefits. Mary’s daughter, Greta, said it quickly became clear that McDuffie was neglecting his duties.

“He did not pay any of her bills,” Greta said. “He didn’t pay her taxes. The whole time he was there, she was in debt. She had back taxes he didn’t pay.”

McDuffie took Mary out of the Anchorage Pioneer Home, a state-owned and operated assisted living facility, and put her in another facility she couldn’t afford, Greta said. Mary had insurance for long-term care, but McDuffie never billed it, Greta said.

Greta said she and her sister worked with multiple lawyers over the course of 19 months to free their mother from her guardianship and conservatorship under McDuffie. But by the time they succeeded, their mother’s health had declined severely. McDuffie didn’t schedule medical appointments for Mary or bring her to the appointments, or to occupational or physical therapy, Greta said.

“She went from walking, getting healthcare, to not getting healthcare, to not being able to walk, to being very depressed,” Greta said. “She wasn’t getting any of the medical treatment she needed.”

Mary has now moved in with Greta’s sister in Southcentral Alaska, and Greta said she’s begun walking again, is more social and her memory is improving. But Greta and her sister are now dealing with the tens of thousands of dollars of debt they said was a result of McDuffie’s mismanagement.

While the lawsuit has yet to be heard in court, the state is in the process of appointing a forensic accountant to untangle the finances of McDuffie’s former wards.

The state Office of Public Advocacy, or OPA, which runs the public guardian system, has so far been unable to help McDuffie’s former wards recover their money. All the funds McDuffie pooled are in an account that’s been frozen since early 2024.

The state is also responsible for McDuffie’s neglect as a guardian, because state employees missed or ignored signs of his failures and enabled his assignments, Shortell said.

The lawsuit names two state employees as defendants: Beth Goldstein, OPA’s deputy director, and Anthony Newman, director of the state health department’s Adult Protective Services unit.

According to the lawsuit, Goldstein did not confirm McDuffie had a relevant license, and for much of the time he was working as a guardian McDuffy didn’t have one. If Goldstein had recognized McDuffie didn’t have his license, she could’ve prevented some of the problems, Shortell said.

“Unfortunately, when it was discovered that he didn’t have a license in good standing, the licensing department of the state just retroactively granted him a license, which is really quite shocking,” Shortell said.

Goldstein also allegedly continued to refer cases to McDuffie despite evidence that he was neglecting his duties.

Adult Protective Services, run by Newman, also could have intervened earlier, after receiving numerous reports of harm about McDuffie and his company, Shortell said.

OPA directed questions about the case to the state Department of Law, which declined an interview request. But spokesperson Patty Sullivan shared a brief comment on McDuffie’s business, Cache Integrity, over email.

“The actions of Cache Integrity are tragic and the state is working on solutions,” the statement says. “It is unfortunate that the state has been included in this lawsuit when the responsibility lies with those who caused the injury.”

But under state law, Shortell said, the state does have a legal responsibility to protect vulnerable Alaskans in its care.

“So, that’s simply not true that the state of Alaska wasn’t responsible,” she said.

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Disabled Alaskans sue state and appointed guardian for alleged financial abuse, neglect