Atlantic County caseworker gets five years for bilking elderly clients

William Price was supposed to be helping older people as a caseworker for Atlantic County Adult Protective Services.

But on Friday, the Linwood man was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing $125,000 from an elderly couple he met through his job. He now must repay that money.

Price, 57, was part of a scheme to bilk the elderly, allegedly led by attorney Barbara Lieberman and Jan Van Holt, the owner of a business that offered in-home care and legal financial planning for the elderly.

Lieberman, who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence, allegedly stole more than $800,000 from the same couple.

Price pleaded guilty in July to second-degree theft by deception, and Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury sentenced him under that agreement.

Price admitted he met the unnamed couple in 2006 through his job with the county. He then befriended them and recruited them as clients for the alleged members of the scheme.

“We’re supposed to respect and care for our elders with the utmost dignity and humanity, but Price callously preyed on this couple, betraying their trust, his duties as a social worker and every standard of decency,” said acting Attorney General John Hoffman. “This prison sentence sends a strong message that this type of abuse of the vulnerable, especially when committed by someone responsible for their care, will be met with harsh punishment.”

Division of Criminal Justice Director Elie Honig said con artists frequently target the elderly.

“What makes this case so appalling is that the man who initially targeted the victims for fraud was a caseworker for Adult Protective Services who used that position to secure the trust of his victims,” Honig said.

“This sentence should serve a strong message to the remaining individuals who were charged along with Price and anyone else who would contemplate similar abuses against the elderly,” said Col. Rick Fuentes, State Police superintendent.

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Atlantic County caseworker gets five years for bilking elderly clients

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Betrayal of Trust

Betrayal of trust, Part 4: How to help the vulnerable

Shannon Mullen, @MullenAPP 

Billions are stolen from the elderly and infirm across the country each year. Here's how to stop it

On June 15, some 200 New Jersey judges, attorneys, guardians and court employees heard a sobering message from the state's top judge.

Read the Betrayal of Trust series

A "silver tsunami" is about to hit New Jersey, New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner warned attendees at a conference on elder abuse at Stockton University in Galloway, Atlantic County.

By 2027, just 12 years from now, 1 in 5 state residents will be 65 or older, according to the New Jersey Department of Labor.

That's 2 million people, with homes, retirement funds and other assets worth billions of dollars — a tempting target for criminals who prey on the elderly.

In time, many of these boomers will fall victim to Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. When that happens, thousands of additional cases will pour into a guardianship system that's already in trouble.

"Judges appoint, of late, 2,000 guardians each year, and it's an enormous challenge for surrogates, for the court system," Rabner said. "To be able to oversee that large number of guardians, it's simply not possible based on the resources that exist."

Yet without major changes, cases like the one involving Barbara J. Lieberman, the now disgraced former Atlantic County attorney who stole millions from incapacitated wards and other elderly clients, are bound to increase.

With all its fiscal woes, what can New Jersey do?

For now, it's counting on volunteers to pick up the slack.

Under a program first introduced in 2013 and expanded across the state last year, trained volunteer monitors are helping the surrogates in all 21 New Jersey counties to review guardian reports and case files.

To date, 69 volunteers have reviewed nearly 4,900 guardianship case files statewide, according to the New Jersey Judiciary.

Click here for a breakdown of volunteer monitoring efforts in each county.

What they've found so far, Rabner said, is a "high level of non-compliance" with reporting requirements by guardians across the state.

Four key fixes
Reforming a guardianship system rooted in medieval laws that allowed for the seizure of property owned by "lunatics" won't be easy, experts say.

For starters, they point to four major areas that need immediate attention:

Better data. How can you fix any problem when you don't know how widespread it is? That's the quandary with guardianship today. There simply are no reliable statistics on the number of Americans who rely on guardians to manage their affairs. That's because only a couple of states track these cases, which are typically administered at the county level. One "guesstimate" pegs the total at 1.5 million, but the real number could be twice that.

Closer monitoring. Most states, including New Jersey, require guardians to file periodic updates on the status of their wards' health and finances. But few courts across the U.S. have the manpower or technology to track and scrutinize these reports. Disreputable guardians know that. With no one looking over their shoulders, they're free to use their wards like ATM machines. One notable exception is Minnesota, which recently implemented a centralized, statewide auditing system to hold guardians accountable.

Barbara Lieberman in Superior Court. (Photo: Staff photo/Bob Bielk)

Greater use of alternatives. Guardianships that strip someone of their autonomy and all their legal rights are supposed to be the remedy of last resort. Yet in too many courts across the U.S., it's the default option, experts say. On the federal level, the U.S. Administration on Aging has tried to promote a more individualistic alternative, called supported decision-making. Using a case management approach, it starts by digging deeper to identify the elderly or disabled person's specific needs. The next step is to line up different people or resources that can address those needs. One person might help pay their bills, for example, while another might help with transportation or household chores. "It's kind of a community taking care of someone, instead of (one person) taking all their rights away and having control over them," explains Elaine Renoire, president of the National Association to Stop Guardianship Abuse, based in Indiana.

A more accessible review process. For some, guardianship operates like the Hotel California in the old Eagles' song: "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave." Stripped of their legal rights, wards who recover from alcoholism or a traumatic brain injury often have a hard time getting back in front of a judge to have their autonomy restored, especially if their guardians won't cooperate. "It can be extremely difficult to get out from under a guardianship," says researcher Brenda K. Uekert, a leading expert on guardianships in the U.S. At the same time, she adds, many courts lack a mechanism for relatives or concerned friends to have the person's guardianship reviewed.

'Entitled' to steal
Until now, monitoring and enforcement has been so lax, the few people who have been charged with abusing their authority practically had to turn themselves in to get caught.

Sources have told the Asbury Park Press that it was one of Lieberman's co-defendants, Susan Hamlett, who triggered a criminal investigation after she brought one of Lieberman's elderly victims to see another attorney. The attorney alerted authorities that he suspected the woman was a victim of elder abuse.

Christopher J. Donadio says he incriminated himself while being deposed in a civil case involving unpaid bills.

Then a K-9 officer with the Monmouth County Sheriff's Department, with an annual salary of $87,400, Donadio had power of attorney over his first wife's elderly aunt, Edna Prester. Prester suffered from Alzheimer's disease, according to court records.

Donadio, 48, says he helped move Prester from her filthy, rodent-infested home in upstate New York to an expensive assisted-living facility in Colts Neck.

But he also helped himself to Prester's money.

Donadio arranged to pay for Prester's care with proceeds from the sale of three properties she owned, authorities said.

When the facility requested the funds, Donadio produced and presented several bogus expense receipts, authorities charged.

After the assisted-living facility filed a lawsuit, Donadio says he revealed in his deposition that he had misappropriated some of Prester's money. The facility then notified authorities.

Prester died in 2010 at age 87.

A grand jury charged Donadio with stealing $100,000 from Prester's account.

Donadio pleaded guilty in 2011 to the theft of more than $75,000. He also admitted that he opened a credit card in the name of his second wife's mother and used a co-worker's credit card number to make purchases. He agreed to pay $32,000 in restitution to the assisted-living facility.

"He wanted to live the good life," says Donadio's second wife, Maura Johnson, 37, of Holmdel. The couple divorced in 2008 after 11 months of marriage.

"Concerts, jewelry, vacations," she says, "it was all for luxury."

Sentenced to four years in prison, Donadio was paroled after serving three months.

Today, Donadio, who now works in the restaurant and transportation industry, says he's sorry for what he did.

With nobody watching over his shoulder, he says, "It was easy for me to take the money."

He describes his rationale for stealing Prester's money this way:

"Well she's OK, she's in an assisted living facility, I improved her living situation, so I should be entitled to that."

A first in the U.S.
New Jersey's volunteer guardianship monitoring program — which Rabner says is the first of its kind in the U.S. — addresses the first two of those key issues.

Stuart Rabner, chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. (Photo: Mel Evans / AP)

As volunteers work through case files, looking for missing reports or red flags pointing to possible improprieties, they're also entering information into a new statewide database.

Until now, New Jersey has never tracked guardianship cases. Some county surrogates don't even know how many of their cases are still active.

Rabner believes the total number of active guardianships statewide may be in the tens of thousands, but no one is sure.

While prior experience with accounting or the courts is a plus, it's not required to join the program.
"To be sure, we need to enlist (and) train yet more volunteers to be able to continue and review these reports on a sustained basis," Rabner told the conference attendees.

"But make no mistake, the very fact that this program now exists in New Jersey will cause people to think twice before they might even consider to take a step to take advantage of those they've promised to help," he added.

Uekert, for one, believes New Jersey is taking a practical approach. She spoke at the elder abuse conference in Stockton and came away impressed by New Jersey's commitment to do a better job policing guardians.

"Ideally you would have a cadre of trained professionals (reviewing guardianship case files) but the courts generally don't have the funds to have those types of personnel," says Uekert, principal court research consultant for the National Center for State Courts, based in Williamsburg, Virginia.

"Volunteers," she believes, "would be better than nothing."

But at least one other expert is strongly opposed to the idea.

"It's just another way of trivializing the problem by saying, 'We can handle this with volunteers,' " says Minnesota law professor A. Kimberley Dayton.

"It's about money, a lack of resources. Until that's fixed, none of this is going to be fixed," she says. "It's just going to keep on going and going."

In Atlantic County, where Lieberman was based, two volunteer monitors have helped the county surrogate review more than 330 cases so far.

But by the time the volunteers began their work last year, the damage was already done.

Shannon Mullen: 732-643-4278; smullen4@gannettnj.com.

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Betrayal of trust, Part 4: How to help the vulnerable

Betrayal of trust: Part Three

Shannon Mullen, @MullenAPP 

Elder abuse cases like Barbara J. Lieberman's aren't supposed to happen in New Jersey.

The state has one of the strongest guardianship laws in the U.S.

On paper, that is.

New Jersey toughened the rules in 2006 after a scandal involving an Ocean County attorney, Gary S. Beninson.

Barbara Lieberman in Superior Court in Atlantic County awaiting her sentencing. She pleaded guilty to money laundering in a case that involved stealing millions of dollars from elderly victims.
(Photo: Staff photo/Bob Bielk)

A Toms River resident with a law practice in Lakewood, Beninson, like Lieberman, was a trusted attorney who regularly received guardianship appointments from the court.

Secretly, though, he was stealing millions from dozens of incapacitated wards, authorities said.

Beninson later admitted to taking $1.7 million and was sentenced to seven years in state prison. He was released in 2005 after serving just over 10 months at a state work farm.

As a result of his case, New Jersey guardians aren't allowed to manage the affairs of more than five wards at one time.

In addition, third-party guardians like Beninson are no longer common, as they are in other states. Typically now, if there is no family member able and willing to take on the responsibility of being the guardian, judges will make the incapacitated person a ward of the state.

That change has placed the agency responsible for their care, the New Jersey Office of the Public Guardian for Elderly Adults, under increasing strain.

In just the past two years, its caseload has soared 40 percent, to about 1,550 wards. Meanwhile, the agency's annual budget hasn't increased. It's remained at $1.3 million for nearly five years.

A 2013 state audit faulted the agency for its "archaic" accounting system and sloppy record keeping.

Alternatives to guardianship. Click to open and close.
(Photo: Staff graphic by Jeff Colson)

Among other problems, a storage room where clients' coins, jewelry and other valuables were kept was in disarray, confidential files were stacked in the hallways, and the estates of two clients who had died in 2007 and 2008, totaling $130,000 in assets, had yet to be dispersed to heirs.

State Auditor Stephen M. Eells referred one unspecified finding, related to "questionable" professional services, to the state Division of Criminal Justice for further investigation. No further information is available on that issue, Eells says.

The agency told the auditor that it has corrected these problems.

Acting Public Guardian Helen C. Dodick declined, through a spokeswoman, an interview request from the Asbury Park Press.

(Continue to Section 2)

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Betrayal of trust: Part Three

Betrayal of trust: Part Three - Section 2

Little Enforcement

A system with no checks and balances

Most private guardians are required to submit status updates and financial reports, but many county surrogate offices — which oversee guardianship cases — simply don't have the manpower to make sure they do, let alone scrutinize the reports that are filed. Since the Beninson scandal, both Monmouth and Ocean counties have hired full-time accountants to keep abreast of the paperwork.

In New Jersey, however, guardianship cases are shrouded in secrecy.

The state's laws shield guardianship financial documents from public scrutiny. The identities of incapacitated individuals and their guardians are kept confidential, even from family members in some cases.

A. Kimberley Dayton, Minnesota law professor and guardianship expert (Photo: Courtesy of William Mitchell College of Law)

Minnesota has taken a different approach.

The state makes all guardianship documents public. In recent years, it also has created a statewide database to keep tabs on guardians, and in a further bid for transparency, it has given anyone the right to call for an accounting of someone holding a power of attorney.

Yet A. Kimberley Dayton, a Minnesota law professor, says guardianship abuses are still rampant in the state.

The reason? The laws simply aren't being enforced, she says.

One of the perpetrators was an appellate court judge who admitted to stealing approximately $300,000 from a trust fund he oversaw for a friend's incapacitated adult daughter.

Read the full sentencing report.

"They keep holding up Minnesota as a model of post-guardianship monitoring. And I know what's going on," says Dayton, one of the country's leading experts on guardianship abuse and crimes against the elderly.

"I just don't think any state is doing a good job," she says.

(Continue to Section 3)

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Betrayal of trust: Part Three

Betrayal of trust: Part Three - Section 3

Back in the courtroom

Handcuffed and sentenced

Lieberman avoided a trial by pleading guilty to one count of money laundering. She also agreed to pay $3 million in restitution, surrender her law license, and to testify against her co-defendants, if necessary.

On March 25, the day of her sentencing, Lieberman, 63, returned to the same courthouse where she built her reputation as a bright, trustworthy attorney.

Barbara Lieberman at her sentencing for laundering almost $4 million, stolen from elderly victims.

This time she wore handcuffs and an orange inmate jumpsuit.

In brief remarks delivered with a steady voice, she thanked and apologized to her family, and spoke of the support she's received from her minister.

"He tells me that God has forgiven me," Lieberman said. "I appreciate that intellectually, but in truth, in my heart, I can't forgive myself."

Hear Lieberman's entire statement to the court.

Lieberman called her conduct "indefensible." Yet she said nothing specific about what she'd done, let alone why she'd done it, and made only an oblique reference to her victims.

"I'm just grateful that I can make them whole for the pain that I know I have caused them," Lieberman said.

She failed to mention that 14 of her 16 victims are dead. Or that the bulk of her restitution money could wind up in the New Jersey treasury.

So far, relatives of only two of the deceased victims have come forward.Together, those relatives will receive about $574,000 of the funds, a court document shows.

If no one else claims the remaining $2.5 million within two years, that money will be forfeited to the state.

See the list of Lieberman's victims.

State Superior Court Judge Michael A. Donio sentenced Lieberman to 10 years in state prison. She must serve 3¹/₂years before becoming eligible for parole.

In scathing comments from the bench, Donio compared her crimes to child abuse.

"Some people will say there's nothing worse than taking advantage of a small child; nothing worse than a sexual predator who lays and waits for a small child to molest," Donio said.

The judge at Barbara Lieberman's sentencing expressed his disgust with her crimes.

"A good argument can be made that what was done to these elderly victims who were in assisted living or nursing facilities, unable to care for their physical or mental well-being and were preyed upon by this lawyer and allegedly by her team of co-conspirators is just as bad. I agree," he said.

"(The exploitation of) elderly people who worked and saved their whole life to end up ... broke because of this greed should be met with the swift sword of justice."

This was no momentary lapse of judgment, Donio noted, but a "continuous course of illegal activity" that spanned a decade, at least.

"Are there other victims? Did it occur over greater than 10 years?" the judge asked.

"We may never know."

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Betrayal of trust: Part Three

Betrayal of Trust: Part Two

Shannon Mullen, @MullenAPP 

Barbara and Ken Martin never stood a chance.

Thoroughly outmatched, their legal fight to free Barbara Martin's aunt, Helen Hugo, from the grip of what they believed to be an unwarranted guardianship in 2012 ended in a humiliating defeat.

Not only was Hugo, then 81, declared mentally incapacitated, but the last of her retirement savings was awarded to the attorneys who represented her. Among them was her court-appointed temporary guardian, Barbara J. Lieberman.

Barbara and Ken Martin communicate with Helen Hugo through her window at Meadowview, a county-run nursing home. For the past few years, Barbara Martin, right, has been banned from entering the facility.
(Photo: Staff photo/Shannon Mullen)

The court left her broke.

The Martins say they only wanted what was best for Hugo. Never married, she lived by herself with her cat, Sweetie Pie, in an apartment in Buena, Atlantic County.

The Martins' bid to help Hugo backfired miserably, however. Accused by Lieberman and others of a host of illegal acts, including Medicaid fraud and forgery, they wound up under a cloud of suspicion.

It still hovers over them today, three years after the trial.

The Martins' loss was Lieberman's gain. By discrediting them, she protected herself. Because, despite all their flaws, the Martins had been right on one crucial point:

Lieberman was stealing from some of her elderly clients.

Her secret still safe, Lieberman was free to continue her deception.

If not for an alleged accomplice's pangs of conscience, she might be doing it still.

There are fundamental flaws within the structure of guardianship.

(Continue to Section 2)

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Betrayal of trust: Part Two

Betrayal of Trust: Part Two - Section 2

'It's about making money'

Thieves are everywhere

In the U.S., scamming the elderly is a nearly $3 billion-a-year-business.

Its growth potential is off the charts.

America is getting grayer by the day. By 2050, the 65 and older population is expected to hit 80 million, almost double what it is now.

Within 12 years, seniors will comprise 20 percent of New Jersey's population, up from 14 percent in 2012.

The scams run the gamut. Becoming a guardian in order to exploit someone is one of the most effective tricks, because it gives a predator total control over someone's life and assets, usually with little or no court oversight.

In the only two states that track the amount of assets under guardians' control, Minnesota and Idaho, the combined total comes to more than $1 billion, says Brenda K. Uekert, a leading guardianship expert.

"I don't think people understand the amount of money we're talking about," says Uekert, principal court research consultant with the National Center for State Courts, in Williamsburg, Virginia.

"You're talking about billions of dollars under the courts' watch."

Alternatives to guardianship. Click to open and close.

(Photo: Staff graphic by Jeff Colson)

An even easier way than guardianship to gain access to that money is to get an elderly person to sign over a power of attorney.

The document gives whoever the elderly person designates the authority to act on his or her behalf in legal and financial affairs.

With guardianships, there's at least the potential for checks and balances. Judges, attorneys and county surrogates all play an oversight role. At least, they're supposed to.

In New Jersey, as in other states, guardians are required to file periodic reports updating the court on their wards' care and finances.

With powers of attorney, there's no such paper trail.

It's little surprise, then, that the majority of Lieberman's 16 victims involved powers of attorney. Three others were guardianship cases.

"Only in three cases did she (Lieberman) have to file accountings with the court. That left 13 cases where there were no prying eyes," says Martha Laham, a California business professor and author of "The Con Game: A Failure of Trust." The book covers guardianship abuse and other scams targeting the elderly.

A prominent elder law attorney in Atlantic County, Lieberman, 63, had a team of accomplices to help her scoop up victims, authorities say. To date, a grand jury has charged five co-defendants. They are all presumed innocent and all but one are still awaiting trial.

Lieberman was the quarterback of the group, a judge has said.

The group zeroed in on seniors in their eighties and nineties.

Many lived lonely lives. Most had no children or close relatives to watch over them in their twilight years.

Irma Schwarzberg was a prime candidate.

She was 87. Alone. And vulnerable.

(Continue to Section 3)

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Betrayal of trust: Part Two

Betrayal of Trust: Part Two - Section 3

Fancy cars, fluffy puppies

Surrounded by strangers

As a child, Linda Carestia loved visiting her "Auntie Irma's" toy shop on her visits to the Jersey Shore.

Her aunt — really a much older cousin — let her pick any toy she wanted, provided it wasn't too big for her to lug home on the train back to Massachusetts.

Along with the sweet taste of salt water taffy and the deep-fried aromas along Atlantic City's famed boardwalk, those toys made Schwarzberg's adopted home seem like a magical place. It was easy to see why Schwarzberg, whom Carestia describes as a feisty, "spark plug" of a woman, left Massachusetts and settled in Ventnor.

Decades later, though, when the two reconnected following the death of Schwarzberg's brother in 2009, the magic was gone.

By then, Schwarzberg, long divorced, lived by herself in a neglected house just blocks from the beach.

Watching over Schwarzberg was a group of women Carestia didn't know.

One was Lieberman, Schwarzberg's attorney; the others were Jan Van Holt, her sister Sondra Steen, and Schwarzberg's home health aide, Susan Hamlett, Carestia and authorities say.

Van Holt, Steen and Schwarzberg have not yet pleaded to the charges against them and are presumed innocent.

Jan Van Holt is charged with stealing money from elderly clients she dealt with through her business, A Better Choice.

Van Holt formerly worked as a caseworker for Atlantic County Adult Protective Services, the same agency that initiated Helen Hugo's guardianship in 2011.

In her county job, Van Holt crossed paths with Lieberman, one of a handful of private attorneys regularly assigned by the court to represent elderly clients in guardianship and estate cases in Atlantic County.

A hard-featured woman in her fifties with chopped blonde hair, Van Holt later sued the county, unsuccessfully, claiming it failed to stop a co-worker from sexually harassing her.

Van Holt stopped working for the county in 2006 and started her own business, A Better Choice. The company offered senior citizens a variety of in-home services, including running errands, scheduling medical appointments, and paying bills.

The Van Holt Carestia knew cultivated the look and lifestyle of a successful entrepreneur. She wore designer clothes and stylish scarves, and rolled up to her clients' homes behind the wheel of a shiny Mercedes, her toy dogs in tow.

"Fancy cars and fluffy puppies" is what Carestia remembers most about her.

She also recalls Van Holt's excitement about a condominium she'd recently bought. Carestia says Van Holt even invited her and her husband, John, down for a visit to the posh island off Florida's Gulf Coast.

"YEAH GONNA OWN A HOUSE ON SANIBEL ISLAND.....LIFE IS GOOD," reads a post on Van Holt's Facebook page, dated Jan. 18, 2011

Years earlier, on Jan. 5, 2005, Van Holt's sister, Steen, obtained a power of attorney from Schwarzberg when she was 87, according to a record on file with the Atlantic County Clerk's Office.

A little over a year later, Steen obtained a reverse mortgage for $405,000 on Schwarzberg's home, according to county clerk records. Such loans provide cash payments based on the home's equity.
 

This is how authorities say the scheme worked.Click to open and close.  (Photo: Staff graphic by Jeff Colson)

Carestia says she knew none of this, but her suspicions were aroused when a piece of jewelry Schwarzberg had showed during one of her visits later disappeared.

One day, Carestia says, Van Holt called her with alarming news.

Schwarzberg herself was missing. Van Holt told her that Hamlett, the home health aide, had disappeared with her, Carestia says.

Carestia says Hamlett had a falling out with Van Holt and brought Schwarzberg to see an attorney, who notified authorities that Schwarzberg was likely the victim of elder abuse, a chronology that a source has confirmed.

"We had no idea what was going on. This became so big. The next thing I know I'm getting calls from the state, and lawyers and judges," Carestia says

Authorities later alleged that Lieberman, Van Holt, Steen and Hamlett had stolen $112,000 from Schwarzberg.

Frail and unable to pay her bills, Schwarzberg ultimately moved to a nursing home, where she died in 2013 after suffering a stroke, Carestia says. She was 95.

"It's heartbreaking," Carestia says now. "There's a lot of guilt that we carry, but we didn't know.

"There was nothing we could do."

 (Continue Reading)

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Betrayal of trust: Part Two

Betrayal of Trust: Part 1

An attorney's shocking crimes show how easy it is to steal millions from seniors.

Part One

Shannon Mullen, @MullenAPP

She has broken no law, committed no crime.

Yet Helen Hugo, a soft-spoken, grandmotherly, 84-year-old "Wheel of Fortune" fan, is a prisoner of the state.

Its laws and bureaucracy have forced the retired secretary into a nursing home. Disposed of her antiques and other belongings. Separated her from her cat, Sweetie Pie. Barred her closest relatives from visiting her, and exhausted her life's savings to pay the legal fees of the attorneys involved in her guardianship case.

In the court's eyes, Hugo is mentally incapacitated and requires a state agency to serve as her guardian and manage her care and finances.

That's what a judge ruled in 2012, after a five-day trial that Hugo didn't attend, except for a private conversation with the judge. She spent all of 33 minutes in the courtroom.

A sturdy, brown-eyed woman with warm, silky hands and wavy hair that's still more brown than gray, Hugo says the court ruling three years ago was "a lot of nonsense."

"Probably the people calling me nuts," she says, "are crazy themselves."

The terms of her guardianship aren't so easily dismissed. As a ward of the state, Hugo can't vote, write a check, receive her own mail, or make decisions for herself. Inmates in New Jersey have greater legal autonomy.

Helen Hugo, trapped by New Jersey's guardianship laws, was declared incapacitated and left broke by the court system.

Hugo has lived under those restrictions since the day she first met Barbara J. Lieberman.

An esteemed elder law attorney and respected member of the New Jersey bar, Lieberman, 63, served as Hugo's court-appointed temporary guardian prior to Hugo's capacity trial.

Attorney Barbara Lieberman in Superior Court in Atlantic County earlier this year.
(Photo: Staff photo/Bob Bielk)

At the same time, Lieberman was leading a double life as a thief. Using her legal skills and her status as a trusted insider, she stole millions of dollars in other cases involving 16 seniors in their eighties and nineties.

Among them was the 85-year-old widow of the former head of the Ocean County Police Academy in Lakewood.

Lieberman moved some into nursing homes and sold their homes. With several, she manipulated their wills so she could keep stealing from them even after they died, authorities have said.

More than a year after Lieberman's crimes came to light, Hugo, who never married and was living alone prior to her guardianship, is still fighting to be free again, to go where she wants, when she wants, even to be reunited with her beloved Sweetie Pie.

The problem is, she can't.

(Continued in Section 2)

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Betrayal of trust:  Part 1

Betrayal of Trust: Part 1 - Section 2

Too much authority

A secret system

Like tens of thousands of elderly New Jerseyans, and at least 1.5 million Americans, she's consigned to a guardianship system that's shrouded in secrecy, tangled in red tape, and rife with corrupting temptation.

Across the U.S., the vast majority of court-appointed guardians do difficult, honest work, providing a critical service for society's most vulnerable citizens.

But there are some who have exploited a system with few checks and balances, using the supreme authority the courts grant them over their wards' lives to enrich themselves.

The lawbreakers have included family members, attorneys, professional guardians, even a high-ranking judge in Minnesota.

Guardianship investigations in New Jersey and other states.

Corrupt guardians have stolen millions in New Jersey in recent years, and perhaps billions across the country.

No one knows for sure.

New Jersey's top judge says these crimes are "deeply troubling."

"There are simply too many cases in which individuals who've been granted authority, who've been granted responsibility, take advantage of the very people that they have ...promised to assist," New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said June 15 at an elder abuse conference at Stockton University in Galloway.

The crimes are easy to commit and even easier to hide. Few courts across the country have the resources, or will, to police the guardians they appoint.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner

At risk is the biggest treasure chest of all: $30 trillion — yes, trillion — that today's graying baby boomers have amassed in assets over the last 50 to 70 years. That's enough money to run the U.S. government for three decades.

Why does all this matter to you? Because every cent stolen is more money that the government will have to pony up through Medicaid payments, and your tax dollars, to care for the elderly and infirm admitted to nursing homes.

And the next victim could someday be your loved one — a parent, a brother or sister, an aunt or uncle.

Maybe even you.

(Continue to Section 3)

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Betrayal of trust:  Part 1

Betrayal of Trust: Part 1 - Section 3

'Not a normal life'

Pining for the way things were

Hugo's story shows just how convoluted and confounding guardianship cases can be.

Lieberman hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing in her handling of Hugo's affairs, and a New Jersey appellate court has affirmed the judge's decision to strip Hugo of her legal rights.

Helen Hugo speaks about her life after a guardian took control. 

Yet four different psychiatrists who have examined Hugo have said she doesn't need to be in such a restrictive type of guardianship.

One even said she showed no signs of dementia.

On her most recent cognitive test, earlier this year, Hugo scored 28 out of a possible 30 points. A score of 23 or lower is considered a indicator of cognitive impairment.

Nearly four years after being diagnosed with "progressive cognitive decline," she's sharp enough to hold a long conversation, critique President Barack Obama's leadership skills, and discuss the legal process that led to her placement in a county-owned nursing home, Meadowview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in Northfield, Atlantic County.

"Did I need to be here? No," Hugo told an Asbury Park Press reporter who visited her in the cramped room she shares with another resident.

"Because my life was OK before. I used to go to the senior center. I had Meals on Wheels," she said.

The life she knew is a distant memory now. Outside the window by her bed, a summer sunset splashed golden light and lengthening shadows across the grass and trees.

Another day had passed her by.

"I miss my own stuff. I miss my cat. I miss being able to come and go, cook my own food. I just miss having a normal life.

"And this," Hugo said, looking around her disinfectant-scented surroundings, "is not what I consider a normal life."



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Full Article & Source:
Betrayal of trust:  Part 1