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| Mariana Cooper |
Amy
A. Lecoq was a stay-at-home mother raising her young son and mourning
the death of her mother. But when her grandmother reluctantly admitted
five years ago that she had been swindled out of her life savings, Ms.
Lecoq sprang into action.
She
shed her home-centered life, first to push prosecutors to investigate
and bring charges, and then, earlier this year, to become an activist,
traveling around her home state of Washington to lecture and testify
about the financial exploitation of older Americans. She has also become
a lobbyist, exhorting state lawmakers to pass legislation that would
toughen penalties for people who take financial advantage of vulnerable
older people like her grandmother.
“When
I tell our story, so many people tell me that, ‘Oh, that happened to my
grandmother, my aunt or some other family member,’” Ms. Lecoq, 41, said
in a telephone interview from her home in Camano Island, Wash. “But
then they say they didn’t know it was a crime, or they didn’t know it
could be reported or punished.”
Her own grandmother, Mariana Cooper, 87, whose financial exploitation was recounted in a 2015 New York Times article,
was swindled by Janet Bauml, who had insinuated herself into her life
and whom she had come to trust. Over time Ms. Cooper, a widow living by
herself, gave more than $217,000 to Ms. Bauml, expecting to be paid
back. When she sheepishly admitted to her granddaughter that she had
been defrauded, Ms. Lecoq spent months calling law enforcement agents
and prosecutors to help make a case for serious theft.
In
late 2015, Ms. Bauml was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
After that, Ms. Lecoq said, she personally felt a calling to raise
public awareness of such crimes.
“There
needs to be a crime called, ‘theft from a vulnerable adult,’ so
everyone knows what it is,” said Ms. Lecoq, who also works part-time for
a Head Start program.
A
number of states have laws like this on the books, but they vary
widely. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,
which tracks such laws, this type of financial abuse is an active topic
in state capitals. Last year, 33 states, as well as the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico, considered measures against the illegal or
improper use of seniors’ money, property or assets, in addition to fraud
or identity theft targeting the older people.
Some
states have shored up their existing laws. Last year, Idaho revised its
definition of neglect of vulnerable adults to include exploitation.
Illinois extended the statute of limitations to seven years from three
for prosecuting a person accused of taking financial advantage of an
older person or a person with disabilities.
Also,
last year, Alabama passed the Protection of Vulnerable Adults from
Financial Exploitation Act, to add a layer of protection to existing
laws by requiring brokers and investment advisers who believe a
vulnerable adult is being exploited to notify the Human Resources
Department and the Alabama Securities Commission.
The National Conference of State Legislatures keeps a scorecard
of such laws, and, as it turns out, Washington is among about a dozen
states that do not define financial exploitation of older people as a
specific crime. Absent such a provision, it is more difficult,
prosecutors say, to cobble together the pieces of evidence required to
convict a wrongdoer, such as a financial audit or competency evaluation.
As
the number of older, wealthier people grows, so does the number of
people eager to prey on them. Occasionally, awareness of such misconduct
is heightened by a notorious case like that of Brooke Astor, the New
York heiress and socialite whose son was convicted of grand theft in 2009 in connection with her large fortune.
But
financial exploitation routinely is overlooked and unreported,
prosecutors say, because — unlike child abuse — there are no formal
government-run systems for complaints and intervention.
“There
is a sense that this is a family matter, and we shouldn’t intrude,”
said Edwin L. Walker, a deputy assistant in the federal Administration
on Aging, of the low national priority such misdeeds often receive. “But
we’re talking about a crime.”
Under
the 2010 Elder Justice Act, the federal government is working to boost
awareness of financial abuse and other crimes against older individuals,
and to encourage more people to report and take legal action against
the misuse of older people’s money.
Senator
Susan Collins, Republican from Maine, has introduced legislation aimed
at improving the reporting of fraud and teaching seniors to recognize
the signs of exploitation. Ms. Collins, who heads the Senate Special
Committee on Aging, called financial fraud against older Americans “a
growing epidemic that costs seniors an estimated $2.9 billion annually.”
In
recent years, the Justice Department has trained prosecutors to handle
cases of abuse of older people and offered online training to law
enforcement officials nationwide. Since most older people still visit
banks, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has compiled a list of
tips for bank tellers on how to identify and thwart suspicious financial
transactions.
Still,
it can be an uphill climb to get legislators to declare such financial
exploitation a serious crime. Washington state lawmakers had been trying
since 2015 to strengthen legal protections, but their efforts had
failed.
Two
months ago, Ms. Lecoq kicked off her advocacy campaign at Washington’s
State Capitol in Olympia, recounting what had happened to her
grandmother. Working with the AARP’s state chapter, she helped
distribute 8,000 citizen petitions to legislators.
“The
person who committed these crimes stole my grandma’s financial security
for the remaining years of her life,” Ms. Lecoq told a crowded town
hall in March in Kirkland, Wash., a Seattle suburb. “But she took more
than money. She stole part of my grandma’s person, the part that was
trusting, confident, healthy, independent and proud of herself.”
Because
Ms. Cooper also lost her home as a result of the fraud, Ms. Lecoq said
that she and her siblings had to sell the “accumulated memories of my
grandma’s lifetime to fit her into a tiny apartment.”
Washington
and other states without a specific financial exploitation crime on the
books typically treat such swindles as ordinary theft — similar to
grabbing someone’s purse on the street — and penalties are less severe.
For example, the nine-felony count conviction of the woman who stole Ms.
Cooper’s money drew a 43-month jail term, longer than the routine
sentence because of the large amount of money stolen, but far less than
the maximum sentence of 89 months the legislation that Ms. Lecoq is
backing would stipulate.
Stiffer
penalties are necessary to combat a growing drain on the savings of
those 60 and over, according to the National Center for Elder Abuse, a
federal clearinghouse. In 2015, in Washington state alone, there were
nearly 8,000 complaints to adult protective services about financial
exploitation, a more than 70 percent increase over 2010. And such crimes
are likely to climb simply because the retiree population is growing.
Representative
Roger Goodman, the Democratic state legislator in Washington who
sponsored the legislation Ms. Lecoq is championing, also has pushed to
increase penalties for neglect of the seniors, and to make it easier to
bring charges and secure convictions for both neglect and financial
abuse, which often go hand-in-hand.
“This
legislation creates a uniform way of dealing with crimes that are
currently being treated inconsistently,” Mr. Goodman said in an
interview.
Full Article & Source:
Declaring War on Financial Abuse of Older People
