The Fortress: Protected by Secrecy and Ageism

by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
Part five of five
At the Oakland County Probate Court, relationships between the four judges as well as those between the judges and the attorneys who work in their courtrooms are not simply limited to judicial campaigns. They have a history that is not always on the surface.

Judge Jennifer Callaghan

Judge Jennifer Callaghan, who began her career as an Assistant Attorney General, was hired by Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun in 2010 as an associate attorney and regularly took guardianship and conservatorship cases at the Oakland County Probate Court. When Callaghan ran for Oakland County Probate Judge in November 2016, Yun’s office served as her campaign headquarters, where she received almost $160,000 in contributions.

Oakland County Probate Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan, retiring probate judge Elizabeth Pezzetti, and Judges Linda S. Hallmark and Daniel A. O’Brien attended as “Honored Guests.” Ultimately, Callaghan won with 68 percent of the vote.

Callaghan’s husband Sean is an FBI agent serving in the Detroit office.

Her Judicial Staff Attorney Christine A. Waid used to work for former Oakland County Public Administrator Jon Munger. His firm’s email address is still listed on her profile at the State Bar of Michigan (SBM) and her name is included an attorney with the firm listed as a defendant in a 2016 lawsuit.

Jon B. Munger

Yun and former Oakland County Public Administrator Jon B. Munger worked out of the same address on Gateway Park Drive in Clarkston, Michigan, before Munger relocated his Munger & Associates headquarters half a mile down the street. While Callaghan recuses herself as judge in Yun cases, Munger regularly appears in front of her.

The ongoing deceased estate hearings concerning musician and civil rights activist Aretha Franklin, who passed away in August 2018 without leaving a will, is presided over by Callaghan.

As he is presently the guardian to Franklin’s eldest son, Clarence, Munger is an interested party in the case.

Judge Linda S. Hallmark was appointed as Oakland County Probate Court Judge in 1997 by then–Governor John Engler (R) after spending three years in private practice at May’s then–law firm May & May, PC. She has been unopposed since taking the bench.

May has donated not only to judicial campaigns, but to individuals running for Michigan’s House and Senate.  ...

Civil Death for the Developmentally Disabled
According to a March 2018 report released by the National Council on Disabilities, an estimated 1.3 million Americans with disabilities have been directly impacted by guardianship. [Dohn] Hoyle asserts that 73 percent of Michigan’s developmentally disabled population are under some form of guardianship.

Dohn Hoyle

We have kind of a mill,” he says. “The issue isn’t one of a blindfolded lady justice deciding upon whether they need one or not. It’s automatically assumed. The system continues to portray the necessity of guardianship.”

In its report, the Council took the system to task.

“It has often been noted that an individual subject to guardianship moves through the world indistinguishable from the rest of the population,” the report noted, “except that he or she has undergone a kind of civil death and is no longer permitted to participate in society without mediation through the actions of another if at all.”

The report’s key findings stated that “people with disabilities are widely (and erroneously) seen as less capable of making autonomous decisions than other adults regardless of the actual impact of their disability on their cognitive or decision-making abilities. This can lead to guardianship petitions being filed when it is not appropriate and to guardianship being imposed when it is not warranted by the facts and circumstances.”

“Prisoners have more rights than people under guardianship,” Hoyle says. “I don’t think people recognize that, they ignore it or don’t pay attention to it. So, probate judges are able to continue what they’ve always done, which is not to the benefit of the people who are given guardians.” 

Full Article and Source:
The Fortress: Part Five of Five: Protected by Secrecy and Ageism

The Fortress: The Consequence of Protecting Justice

by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
Part four of five

[F]amily members, like so many others in Oakland County and across Michigan, feel helpless. In trying to find legal counsel for themselves or their loved ones, they scoured the State Bar of Michigan’s website and methodically contacted each on its substantial list of estate, probate and elder law attorneys.

According to numerous families who spoke with this investigation, if their case has anything to do with the Oakland County Probate Court, attorneys either declined to represent them or asked for an unaffordable retainer.

Two such attorneys stated that the reason was a high probability of facing punitive sanctions or a disciplinary investigation by Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission for challenging a probate judge’s appointee.

They spend day-after-day desperately seeking help from the Attorney General, and, since their cases involved public administrators appointed as guardians and conservators, State Public Administrator Michael Moody. ...

A Task Force of Their Own

MI AG Dana Nessel

During the run-up to last year’s election, [Mimi] Brun and[Jayne} Collins met with then–candidate for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who pledged to do what her predecessor had refused and take their complaints about the Oakland County Probate Court seriously.

During a March 25 press conference at her office in Lansing, she announced the creation of an Elder Abuse Task Force. With the participation of Michigan Supreme Court Justices Richard Bernstein and Megan Cavanaugh, Nessel presented a number of reforms to Michigan’s guardianship system as among their primary goals.  Although attendance to the press conference was restricted only to members of the press, [Randy] Asplund, McCasey, Abood, Rice-White and her husband Jeff went to Lansing anyway.

There, alongside families fighting probate cases in both Oakland and Wayne counties, they carried signs demanding an investigation of Michigan’s probate courts and asked Nessel’s staff if they could join the event.

Since it was their lives and those of their loved ones that had been devastated by the probate courts, they were surprised to be denied access. During the press conference, no mention was made of investigations into alleged crimes committed by probate judges, public administrators or attorneys. Supreme Court Communications Director John Nevin told a reporter that “we don’t have specific instances of wrongdoing.”

Full Article and Source:
The Fortress: Part Four of Five: The Consequence of Protecting Justice

MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL DANA NESSEL AND GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER TIED TO INVESTIGATION OF MASSIVE ELDER ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION RING..

LOS ANGELES , CA, USA, August 26, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/

NESSEL FIRES THREE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS EXPOSED IN THE STORY.

Michigan Attorney General
Dana Nessle

An August 23 investigation detailing a massive alleged elder abuse and exploitation ring operating out of a Michigan probate court was published on the same day that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel fired three public administrators, exposed in the story as allegedly exploiting thousands of vulnerable Americans under their guardianship.

High-profile cases such as the ongoing dispute concerning the estate of famed musician Aretha Franklin have been affected.

Franklin's eldest son Clarence is under the guardianship of Michigan attorney Jon Munger who is one of the targets of the probe which uncovered an unsettling number of alleged crimes including abuse, neglect, robbery, and exploitation, often in cases that arguably didn’t merit guardianship in the first place.

In as little as a year, so called "incapacitated wards” are stripped of the entirety of their savings and possessions and rendered completely reliant upon social services and benefits such as Medicaid.

Hammond states that she and her team revealed their findings to Nessel's staff at a March 12, 2019 meeting implicating three of the four public administrators Nessel eventually fired.

On March 25, 2019 Nessel announced the creation of a multi-agency Elder Abuse Task Force. The Task Force presented nine reforms to the guardianship system. Nessel claims the firings were due, in part, to Task Force discoveries.

Hammond says she does not buy it.

"Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and her staff knew this story was coming ever since our March meeting," she says."Her firing of the public administrators we discussed has been a long time coming but doesn't have any effect without criminal investigations. They can still take guardianship cases."

In a forensic review of the Oakland County Probate Court, available to the public for the first time in Michigan history, Mulholland also concludes that criminal investigations into the guardians are warranted.

Hammond's investigation found campaign donations from Nessel to Oakland County Probate County Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan. It also revealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Whitmer by a public relations company owned by Ryan's brother James.

Background:
Every US state still uses form of guardianship Rooted in Medieval English law, at its best, it is designed to protect citizens who are no longer able to protect themselves by declaring them wards of the state. However, increasing reports of abuse cropping up nationwide, has prompted Congressional calls for reform.

But the level of controversy over how guardianship cases are handled in the Detroit-area Oakland County Probate Court has reached such heights, the story reads more like Orwellian fiction than it does a model of the American experience.

Discoveries include the forced separation of families and isolation of the vulnerable; fraudulent petitions for guardianship by Adult Protective Services investigators; massive over-billing; the forced removal of individuals from their homes and the placement of them in nursing facilities or unlicensed group homes with subhuman living conditions; real estate fraud; and missing assets that number in the millions of dollars.

The investigation met with constant challenges, including threats and harassment by Oakland County Sheriff’s officers. A surreal March 12, 2019 four-hour meeting between Hammond's team and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's staff led to a new line of inquiry and discoveries of campaign ties between Nessel, Whitmer and Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan and her family.
###
ROGER NEAL
NEAL PR
+1 323-366-2796

Click the links below to read the five part series:

The Fortress Part One of Five: Unacknowledged and Unprotected

The Fortress Part Two of Five: Protected in Hell
The Fortress Part Three of Five: Profiting from Protection 
The Fortress Part Five of Five: Protected by Secrecy and Ageism

The Fortress Part Four of Five: The Consequences of Protecting Justice

The Fortress: Profiting From Protection

By Gretchen Rachel Hammond
Part three of five

It was December 18, 2018, and in the lockdown Alzheimer’s unit of Lahser Hills Care Center in Southfield, Michigan, 64-year-old Virgil sat at a rectangular, plastic lunch table with a small and untouched plate of food in front of him.

The lockdown unit is on the second floor of the facility and only accessible from the main entrance via a code-restricted elevator, the doors of which open into a common area that looks like a hybrid of a hospital ward and prison dayroom.

Legally deaf, Virgil (whose last name is omitted for privacy reasons) stared directly ahead. He made no eye contact, but his expression was one of despair. His only answer to questions from this investigation was given through a single, cinematic tear that ran down his cheek, which he made no attempt to wipe away.

For 40 years, Virgil had lived in his childhood home in Pontiac under the care of his mother Beth. After she passed away and left the home to Virgil, the neighbors, with whom both mother and son were close, stepped in and helped wherever they could. Virgil was not a wealthy man. He had no savings to speak of, and his only income came via a Social Security check.

However, he did have property.

Jennifer Carney

In late 2016, Oakland County Public Administrator Jennifer Carney was given control over that property alongside Virgil’s income, identity, possessions, and future after he was placed under her guardianship by Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan. It all began when a petition for guardianship was filed in the court by Michigan Adult Protective Services (APS). The reasons for the guardianship began “[Virgil] is deaf.”

Virgil was adamant that he did not want to leave his childhood home, something he was able to express to his Guardian ad Litem (GAL), a probate attorney assigned by the court to investigate the allegations, inform Virgil about his rights, note his objections and make recommendations as to whether guardianship is warranted. Virgil’s feelings were echoed by his neighbors in letters to Ryan.

On August 11, 2017, Carney met with Virgil at his home. In his subsequent report, the GAL noted that, “Ms. Carney indicated a willingness to allow for a temporary move, while determining if MORC [Macomb Oakland Regional Center] services are available to allow [Virgil] to remain in his home.”'

Losing a Home (Twice)
Carney’s accounting shows that, from her point of view, Virgil’s forced relocation was far from temporary.

On September 25, 2017, Carney’s office told Lahser Hills that “the plan is for Virgil to be there long-term.” By November, Carney was billing Virgil $10.50 per-call for back-and-forth calls between her office and a property preservation services company called Wolverine Securing, which was disposing of “[Forty] yards of debris” from inside Virgil’s home. It was not explained, in the line item, whether this included any of personal belongings. However, on November 27, Carney’s accounts note that Virgil’s sister called to inform the Public Administrator that that she had taken “some photos etc. out of the house.”

According to those same accounts, the sale of Virgil’s “Property-auto/personal” netted a total of $842. It is unknown whether Carney took a car or if Virgil even owned one. However, what is clear is that she paid Wolverine Securing $1,969. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) lists the Wolverine Securing headquarters with the same Clawson Tank Drive, Clarkston, address as the law firm of former Oakland County Public Administrator Jon Munger. Carney was employed by Munger before forming her own practice in 2017.

Virgil’s home was listed on February 20, 2018, for $44,900 and was taken off the market one day later. A line-item in Carney’s accounting shows that the realtor called her office one week before the home was listed with information about a potential buyer.
On February 23, 2018, Carney filed a petition with Ryan to sell Virgil’s home for $41,400.

The only evidence of the home’s value, attached to the petition, was an Oakland County tax assessment, which was not dated. In the document, Carney noted a total of $6,172.35 in unpaid taxes and mortgage on the property.

On November 8, 2018, Earnest Inc. signed a Quit Claim Deed ( a document transferring interest in property from one individual/company to another) for the property to a Florida company, Evergreen Mortgage Notes, for $10.

Today, Virgil’s former home is listed for sale at $89,500 (reduced from the original list price of $104,900).

Accounting Questions
In 2018, Carney applied for and received Medicaid on behalf of Virgil, with a $1,123-per-month patient pay amount, paid to a facility outside of the bills covered by Virgil’s Medicaid or insurance benefits. She indicated that Virgil also received Medicare.

A February 16, 2018, line item shows that Carney’s office contacted an attorney and limited-license psychologist, who is on the Oakland County Probate Court’s list of individuals conducting Independent Medical Examinations (IMEs) for the developmentally disabled. She advised him that “the house is up for sale. Once we have those funds, we will be able to pay the bill.”

According to her account, filed one year later, Virgil’s annual income was $16,821.04. However, his expenses totaled $50,851.55.

Full Article and Source: 
The Fortress: Part Three of Five: Profiting From Protection

The Fortress: Protected into Hell

by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
Part two of five

“Get me the hell out of here!”

It was a Saturday evening on Thanksgiving weekend, 2018, and Carolyn was sobbing bitterly in the living room of an unassuming four-bedroom bungalow on Leslie Street in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park.

The home was one of a myriad of unlicensed small group facilities across Michigan’s Oakland, Wayne and Genesee Counties in which adults and developmentally disabled individuals have been placed after being declared an “incapacitated ward” by Oakland County Probate Court Judges, Jennifer Callaghan, Linda Hallmark, Daniel A. O’Brien and Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan.

Carolyn, 64, who like her two roommates, Rita and Mary, asked to keep her last name private, had been moved into the facility by her court-appointed guardian and former Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun.

The three women told this investigation that they had been alone since the previous Wednesday, when all staff left for the Thanksgiving holiday. On their way out, someone had wrapped a large chain around the handles of the kitchen’s refrigerator/freezer combo unit and padlocked them shut.

Fortunately, Mary’s son was able to bring in McDonald’s once a day, otherwise the women would have been left for the entire long weekend without any food at all.

Court records show that individuals who attempt to leave a nursing or group home facility (called eloping) have been tracked down and caught by Oakland County Sheriffs or local police and then placed, by the guardian, in a lockdown ward.

Carolyn is one of well over 1,500 wards whose lives are under the complete control of Oakland County Public Administrators who act as guardians and conservators. Even though the roles are not in their job descriptions, they have accepted thousands of cases as private attorneys. They include Yun and his colleagues, Thomas Brennan Fraser, Jennifer Carney and Jon Munger.

Judge Daniel O'Brien

In March 2016, presiding Judge O’Brien had declared Carolyn incapacitated and handed her over to Yun. His decision followed a petition for guardianship filed by a Michigan Adult Protective Services (APS) Investigator, which stated that the “Proposed ward survived a stroke in July 2015 resulting in some physical limitations and some memory issues.”

Yet, as Carolyn was ravenously devouring what was left of her paltry McDonald’s Thanksgiving dinner, she had no problem recalling her life under Yun who exerted control over every aspect of it, including her annual $12,579 Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

In an account Yun filed with the court in April 2017, he took $2,700 in attorney’s fees from Carolyn, paid $7,224 in group home rent and gave her an allowance of $1,538 for the year, or approximately $128 per month. However, according to Carolyn, she only received $40 per month from Yun, which left her reliant on the unlicensed group homeowner and its staff for her food and daily living needs.

She added, at the time, that she had seen Yun only once in the more than two years since she had been placed under his guardianship. Despite begging him to allow her to live independently, she claimed that he simply responded, “You’re fine where you are.”

With no money, no means of transportation and terrified to say even a word of dissension to the group homeowner, whom Carolyn described as “harsh,” it has been next to impossible for her to work toward independent living. But that wasn’t the worst of her problems. Between tears, she claimed Yun had also isolated her from her own daughter.

“I lost my family because of him,” she said.

Carolyn believed her daughter had no idea she was under Yun’s guardianship, that she didn’t know how to reach her and that Yun would not provide any new contact information.

Full Article and Source:

The Fortress: Part Two of Five: Protected into Hell

The Fortress: Unacknowledged and Unprotected.

by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
Part one of five

In 2016, retired teacher Christine Abood's mother, Gloria, was placed under the control of Oakland County Public Administrator John Yun who put her in a Novi, Michigan, nursing facility. Abood and her sons say they were unable to be at Gloria’s bedside on the night she died because she had been moved and Yun didn’t know where she was.

“I will never forget that, never,” Abood says. “He was supposed to care for her and he didn’t even know where she’d been moved? Why?”

It was a question Abood raised during a 45-minute back-and-forth argument with [Michigan Attorney General Dana] Nessel’s staffers, who refused her and the other families access to the press conference. She left the lobby, throwing her arms up in exasperation. ...

...During her more than two-year fight to regain custody of her mother, [Virginia] Wahab’s daughter Mimi Brun claimed she was denied visitation rights, had a warrant issued by [Judge Linda S.] Hallmark for her arrest and filed three reports with the local police department asserting that [then Oakland County Public Administrator Jon] Munger had illegally entered her mother’s home and looted it.

Jon Munger

After the story was published, a July 30, 2018 bench trial on Brun’s petition to terminate the guardianship and conservatorship of Munger was presided over by Hallmark. During a day-long deposition, Munger was asked how many times he had been appointed as a guardian.

“Several thousand,” he replied, but could not precisely cite the Michigan statute under which a guardian is considered necessary.

He admitted to entering Wahab’s home to look for “Information about ownership, assets, bills, any of the above” and to taking a painting that was hanging on Wahab’s wall.

“It's very colorful. I walk around it every day in my office,” Munger noted.

When asked if he had seen his ward lately, Munger replied, “In 2018, I doubt it.”

He also admitted that he hadn’t reviewed Wahab’s medical records since his first visit in 2016.

Judge Linda S. Hallmark

After a second day of testimony, the trial was adjourned. Before it could resume, Hallmark issued an August 3 opinion and order terminating Munger as guardian and conservator.

“Mr. Munger has satisfactorily provided care, control and custody of Ms. Wahab,” Hallmark wrote. “In all of these matters, Mimi Brun has interfered with Mr. Munger using misinformation, obfuscation and self-dealing. She has engaged in scorched earth litigation. Ms. Brun has demonstrated a complete lack of authority because she believes herself to be the victim.”

“The litigation in this matter has been ongoing for two years,” Hallmark concluded. “The financial and emotional costs to the ward have been significant. It is not in the ward’s best interests for the litigation to continue. Her assets have been depleted but remain with the family.”

Full Article and Source:,
The Fortress Part One of Five: Unacknowledged and Unprotected