Senate Special Committee on Aging Holding Forum Today: 'Aging in America: Future Challenges, Promise and Potential'

The Senate Special Committee on Aging is holding a forum Wednesday to commemorate the committee's 50th anniversary, titled: “Aging in America: Future Challenges, Promise and Potential.”

Convened by retiring Committee Chairman Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), the forum will be held Wednesday from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. (E.T.). Featured panelists include Kathy Greenlee, assistant secretary for the Administration on Aging; Robyn Stone, Dr. P.H., executive director, LeadingAge Center for Applied Research; and Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director of the National Institute on Aging.

The forum will be held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in Washington, D.C.

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Senate Special Committee on Aging to Host Forum on Aging

Nearly 2 Years After Devastating Head Injury, Snowboarder is Back

Instead of riding for Kevin, snowboarders can ride with Kevin again. Kevin Pearce's remarkable recovery will reach a major milestone next week when he gets back on snow for the first time in the two years since his life-threatening accident on the halfpipe.

"I'm kind of trippin' that we're finally here," Pearce said Thursday. Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury in an accident during practice Dec. 31, 2009, that left him in a coma. His plight spawned the slogan "I Ride 4 Kevin," and ever since the accident, those stickers and patches have been plastered across snowboards and jackets on slopes across America.

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Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network

FL: Ex-Lawyer Gets 2 Years Prison for Elder Fraud

A disbarred Kissimmee lawyer was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for bilking elderly people out of their life savings.

Linda Vasquez, formerly known as Linda Littlefield, pleaded no contest in May to engaging in a scheme to defraud of $20,000 or more. The state dropped 11 counts of fraudulent use of personal-identification information.

Vasquez, 40, also was ordered to pay some restitution, although the amount was not available.

Vasquez's ex-husband, Ross Littlefield, 47, pleaded no contest in November to one count of fraudulent use of a credit card. The state dropped 10 other fraud charges and one count of scheme to defraud. His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 24.

Several lawsuits are pending against the former couple, a pooled trust they controlled, foundations that administered the trust and Medicaid Benefits Experts, a company Littlefield established last year in Tampa after her arrest.

An attorney for some of the plaintiffs said hundreds of thousands of trust money has vanished.

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Ex-Lawyer Gets 2 Years Prison for Elder Fraud

See Also:
Elderly Couple Faces Nightmares

AZ Woman, Boyfriend Charged With Theft Against Bedridden MS Patient

A Tucson woman and her boyfriend are both facing fraud and theft charges against a bedridden multiple-sclerosis patient, who later died.

36-year-old Lea Marie Hughes is already in jail for allegedly neglecting 64-year-old Ruthann Jacox. She died Nov. 8 at Tucson Medical Center 11 weeks after Hughes was arrested on suspicion of vulnerable adult and child abuse charges.

Hughes' boyfriend, 39-year-old Gilbert Pierre Peralta Jr., denied the charges after his arraignment Thursday in Pima County Superior Court.

Peralta told the Arizona Daily Star the couple loved Jacox as though she was a member of the family and denied ever stealing from the ailing woman.

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Woman, Boyfriend Charged With Fraud

Man Indicted, Accused of Fleecing Oil Company Heir of $20 Million

A Chappaqua man accused of bilking a Katonah musician and oil company heir out of $20 million has been indicted on felony charges that could send him to prison for up to 25 years.

Vickram Bedi pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree grand larceny after rejecting a plea deal in which he would have agreed to serve five to 15 years in state prison.

A grand jury indicted him on Nov. 29.

Westchester County Judge Barbara Zambelli today restored Bedi's $3.5 million bail to $5 million after prosecutors detailed the complicated six-year scheme that Bedi allegedly used to fleece Roger Davidson, a pianist and composer.

Bedi and his girlfriend, Helga Ingvarsdottir, are accused of conning Davidson into believing he was in grave danger because his computer had been compromised and offered him protection. Davidson had taken his virus-plagued computer to Datalink Computer Services, owned by Bedi, in August 2004.

The schemes, prosecutors claim, included stories of threats by Polish priests affiliated with the Roman Catholic Opus Dei order. Bedi allegedly told Davidson that the Central Intelligence Agency had subcontracted with him to help prevent the Polish priests from infiltrating the U.S. government.

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Chappaqua Man Indicted Accused of Fleecing Oil Company Heir of $20 Million

Arthur Goldstein Included Among 'Best Lawyers in America'

Upper Saddle River resident Arthur S. Goldstein has been included in the latest edition of the publication "Best Lawyers in America."

Selection to the 2012 edition of Best Lawyers is based on a peer-review survey comprising more than 3.9 million confidential evaluations by other top attorneys, according to the publication's website.

"It is an honor to be included, for the eighth consecutive year, in such a prestigious peer-review publication," said Goldstein, a litigator who practices in the areas of banking, commercial and estate litigation, and white collar criminal law, in an email.

He is a member of the law firm Wolff & Samson PC, which has 25 members from a range of Wolff & Samson's practice groups listed in the 2012 edition of Best Lawyers.

Goldstein served as legal counsel to the Transition Committee of Bergen County Executive-elect Kathleen Donovan, according to a press release from the firm. He also leads Wolff & Samson's efforts as special counsel to the Bergen County Improvement Authority.

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Arthur Goldstein Included Among 'Best Lawyers in America'

Three Charged With Forgery of Late State Representative's Will

Forgery charges have been filed relating to the will of the late state representative Ulysses Jones, Jr.

Avis Langford-Brannon, Beverly Prye and Sandra Richards have been indicted on charges of forgery, tampering with evidence and aggravated perjury.

All three women are employed by the Memphis Fire Department. Their bonds are set at $20,000 each.

In May, the fight over Jones' will ended with a Probate Court judge ruling that the signature on the document was not Jones' and therefore not valid.

The fake will had left the bulk of the estate to a woman he lived with for the past 18 years.

Two handwriting experts testified Jones' signature was a forgery.

The estimated $100,000 estate is now in the hands of Jones' two adult children, who contested the will.

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Three Charged With Forgery of Late State Representative's Will

Massachusetts' Highest Court Rejects Criminal Prosecution of Nursing Home Facility

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts indicted Life Care Centers of America, a nursing home corporation, based on its staff's alleged failure to act to protect a resident from known life-threatening harm. The indictment charged the corporation with involuntary manslaughter and neglect based on its collective knowledge and conduct of a number of the corporation's employees, without singling out any one employee for indictment.

This was the first time in Massachusetts that a corporation had been indicted criminally for manslaughter and neglect in a nursing home setting without the charging of an individual, and the question of whether a corporation can be held liable under such a theory was taken up by the state's highest court.

Unfortunately, the court declined to find a criminal prosecution proper against the corporation, ruling that the alleged criminal responsibility could not be supported under state law.

AARP's brief, filed by attorneys with AARP Foundation Litigation, reviewed the history of nursing home regulation, litigation and criminal liability.

The brief also discussed the collective knowledge theory of corporate liability — a legal doctrine that is derived from the concept that a corporation can be held criminally liable for the acts or omissions of its agents acting within the scope of their employment. This theory has, for example, held trucking firms criminally liable for knowingly and willfully permitting unsafe drivers to operate, and it has been used in other situations where the courts determined it was the corporation's responsibility to determine whether its employees, in carrying out their duties to their employer, were complying with the law.

AARP's brief detailed how numerous states around the country had brought criminal charges against nursing home corporations and have resolved those cases separately from charges brought at the same time against individual officers or agents of the corporation. That separate liability, the brief argued, combined with the collective knowledge theory, supported the state's contention that a corporation can in fact be held liable for criminal misconduct in the absence of charges against individuals

Full Article and Source:
Commonwealth of MA v Life Care Centers of America

Read AARP's Amicus Brief

The Ponzi Thief Who Picked Judges

Where do judges come from?

From Marybeth Feiss, of course.

Feiss, according to federal investigators, ran the fraudulent political contribution scheme that enabled her bombastic, absurdly grandiose, insanely ostentatious Ponzi thief of a boss, among other outrages, to buy himself a seat on the state judicial nominating committee.

Feiss, 42, was charged last week with bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from 2006 through 2009 at the behest of the infamous scammer Scott Rothstein. Some $3 million was funneled to local, state and federal candidates and political parties, much of it illegally, through lawyers and employees (and their spouses) of his now-defunct Las Olas Boulevard law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler.

The criminal complaint, filed Thursday (exactly two years after the feds arrested Rothstein), states: “It was the object of the conspiracy that Rothstein and his co-conspirators, including Feiss, aimed to dramatically increase the political influence and power of RRA and become one of the most powerful law firms in the country by utilizing some of the attorneys and administrative personnel of RRA and other persons associated with RRA to unlawfully make prohibited political contributions.” Rothstein reimbursed his minions for the contributions, much of it in the guise of bonuses.

John Gillies, the head of the FBI office in South Florida, put it a bit more succinctly. With Feiss, his administrative assistant, doing what assistants do, Gillies said, “Rothstein tried to buy political influence with the money he stole from the Ponzi scheme to contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns.”

But Rothstein didn’t just try to buy political influence. He outright bought it.

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The Ponzi Thief Who Picked Judges