Marie wanted the chance to live her own life — and make her own mistakes. Her father said that was unthinkable.
By Katie J.M. Baker and Heidi Blake
Marie Bergum furtively scanned
the gym locker room to make sure no one was watching, then took out her
phone. She had gotten in trouble for making calls there, but felt she
had no privacy at home, so she had to take her chances. Marie worried
that if her dad realized she wasn’t lifting weights, he would call her a
liar or trail her the next time she left the house. And if he knew what
she was really up to, he might take her phone away again.
Marie was in her 30s, not a rebellious teenager. Her friends knew her
as a gregarious woman who expertly applied thick winged eyeliner behind
her glasses, unafraid to stand out. But due to Marie’s intellectual
disability, her father, Jim, had ruled her life for 11 years as her
legal conservator. Marie knew she needed assistance with things like
budgeting and making medical decisions, but she wanted to call the
shots. “I need help with life!” she’d later say. “But I want them to
show me, not do it for me.” In recent years, she had assembled a network
of lawyers, family members, and others who shared her belief that she
was capable of so much more. That’s why Marie was in the locker room,
whispering to them on the phone. She was plotting her steps toward
freedom.
In court filings, Marie and her supporters would accuse
Jim of controlling her hard-earned money, forbidding intimate relations
with boyfriends, isolating her from people he disliked, and verbally
abusing her, calling her “stupid” and “fat.” He had relocated her from
city to city as he chose and wanted to move her out of California
altogether. Marie said the older she got, the more she craved
independence, but every attempt to claim it was held up as proof that
she didn’t deserve it.
“Everything was taken away,” Marie told BuzzFeed News. “A little bit every year.”
Jim
told BuzzFeed News he loved his daughter, but that for someone in her
situation, the world was full of hazards and people looking to take
advantage of her.
“My job is to protect her and put her on the path that she can
succeed as best as she can. And I think I've been doing that,” he said.
Jim
said he had never been cruel to Marie and had given her the best
possible quality of life. As for the limits he imposed, they kept her
from mistakes she would regret. Jim said he didn’t take Marie’s
accusations personally, even while disputing many of them. “I don’t
blame her,” he said. “I’ve never blamed her. This is her disability, for
heaven’s sake.”
Dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of
pages of court documents cast a light on the challenges that many
families face in deciding the best way to support someone with
disabilities. For Marie and Jim, it came down to a fundamental conflict
about what Marie was capable of and who was best suited to help her
achieve it, but also, more broadly, whether everyone has the right to
self-determination.
Marie was intent on taking her chances. “I
don’t care how long it takes,” she’d later say. “I’m going to keep doing
it, fighting the conservatorship.”
Marie Bergum at the thrift store where she works, outside Watsonville, California. Victoria Will for BuzzFeed News
America’s guardianship system is designed to protect people so
incapacitated by a mental or physical disability that they cannot make
any decisions for themselves. BuzzFeed News recently exposed
the lucrative industry that has arisen around it, wielding tremendous
power with little oversight and swallowing up people who say they should
have control over their own lives.
Experts said it can be
particularly hard to obtain freedom from guardians (known as
“conservators” in California) who are family members. The #FreeBritney
movement has drawn international attention to the conservatorship of
Britney Spears, but though her celebrity is exceptional, her predicament
is far from unique. Marie said she felt “just like her” — a
thirtysomething Californian who has fought mightily to break her
father’s control.
Family guardianship is especially common among
people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Although it is
meant as a last resort, many parents of children with disabilities seek
guardianship as soon as they turn 18, often because schools present it
as the only way to ensure their care. The National Council on Disability calls
it a “school-to-guardianship pipeline.” Disability rights lawyers say
they regularly receive panicked calls from parents who didn’t realize
they had signed their adult child’s rights away.
“Years later they regret it,” said attorney Viviana Bonilla López,
who recalled a 10-minute hearing granting a parent guardianship over an
adult son. Afterward, the parent asked when they could register him to
vote, not understanding that he had just lost that right. Once granted, a
guardianship can be hard to dissolve, even if parents wish to do so.
Court
records describe frightening stories about family guardianships, from a
man with quadriplegia who died with bone-deep bedsores after years of
parental neglect to a man with a mental illness whose mother slit his
throat with a box cutter.
Overwhelmingly more common are cases like Marie’s, where at stake is
what some call the “dignity of risk”: the right to make choices freely,
good and bad, to learn from and live full lives. For those who need
support, there are options that are less restrictive than guardianship
or conservatorship, such as “supported decision-making,”
which enables people to construct their own support networks instead of
having someone take over the person’s life and make their choices for
them. Disability rights experts say that everyone, especially young
adults, deserves the chance to learn from past missteps.
“The
notion that we are who we will always be at 18 is wrong,” and typical of
the double standard applied to people with disabilities, said attorney
Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union’s
disability rights program who worked on Marie’s case.
“Think about
what you were like as a teenager,” she said. “What if a judge assessed
who you were and said you’d never be able to grow or change, or
accomplish anything more?”
Marie (right) in an undated photo. Courtesy Marie Bergum
When Marie was a 2-year-old growing up in Michigan, she
contracted meningitis, which left her with an intellectual disability.
An IQ test she took shortly after she was placed in guardianship put her
in the borderline intellectual functioning range. Marie lived a fairly
independent life similar to that of other teenagers, she and her mother
said, taking the bus to a job at McDonald’s where she helped work the
cash register, cooking at home, and taking care of the dogs.
Advocates
have questioned the usefulness of IQ scores, since they measure only
certain skills and don’t factor in the chance someone has to develop
them. Marie always felt her test results, which played a role in her
guardianship determinations, didn’t reflect her true abilities. “I’m
smart in so many ways,” she said. “I just have a different way of
learning.”
Marie’s parents were divorced and in 2007, when she was 21, her
father agreed to take her in, offering a change of scenery. Her mother,
Cathy Caldwell, said she was surprised that Jim applied for a full
guardianship and didn’t realize it would enable him to control all their
daughter’s life decisions indefinitely. If she had known about other options, such as becoming Marie’s Power of Attorney, she would have done that instead, she said.
Jim
said Marie consented to the guardianship, but she told BuzzFeed News
she did not understand what it fully entailed; the court records are
unclear. Her father had promised her freedoms, Marie said, but she soon
felt that he set unfair limits, beginning with her social life.
Like
many young adults, Marie didn’t always have the best taste in guys.
There was one who at first everyone in the family liked — Jim even took
him on a family vacation — but who stole Marie’s debit card. Marie’s
Aunt Nancy would later testify that her own daughters, who don’t have
developmental disabilities, acted out in some of the same ways as Marie.
The behavior was “all part of normal child-rearing,” she said.
But
the incident stuck with Jim and his supporters in the family. A decade
later, they were still citing it as part of their evidence that Marie
needed his protection. (Click to continue reading)
Falling in love and getting married cast two very different couples into the same nightmare. A BuzzFeed News investigation.
By Heidi Blake and Katie J.M. Baker
Early one August morning,
a young woman in camouflage shorts and a plastic tiara slipped out of a
building in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and hopped into the Dodge Neon
idling outside. She snatched a brief kiss with her childhood sweetheart,
waiting at the wheel in cowboy boots, before he gunned the engine and
set out along the Flaming Gorge canyon. At 7:15 a.m., just across the
border in Utah, Arieana Wynter and Jesse Jones were declared husband and
wife.
It was 2,000 miles away, in Florida, that a retired engineer and
former Navy reservist named Doug Keegan donned a crisp suit and said his
vows. His bride wore a white dress dotted with pink flowers. Monica
Steele had transformed Keegan’s life since the pair met the previous
year. After decades as a bachelor, he finally had someone to cook for,
sing to, and teach how to swing a golf club. They had already
honeymooned in Kenya. Now it was time to make it official. “When I said,
‘I’m going to love you forever,’” he later recalled, “that was cemented
into my heart.”
The two couples were worlds apart in age, wealth,
and social background — but their marriages had something in common
that neither could have imagined. Each one would be used to support
arguments that both Wynter and Keegan had mental disabilities so
profound that they were incapable of making decisions about their own
lives and should instead live under the control of virtual strangers.
Wynter
and Keegan were sucked into America’s sprawling guardianship system,
which was designed as a last-resort protection for people who are
incapacitated by a mental or physical disability. Guardians who carry
out their duties faithfully can provide a lifeline for those in need.
But an ongoing BuzzFeed News investigation has found that the system has grown into a lucrative and poorly regulated industry that has subsumed more than a million adults.
Most of the freedoms articulated in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights are denied to people under full guardianship: They can lose their rights
to vote, marry, start a family, decide where they live, consent to
medical treatment, spend their money, seek employment, or own property.
It is among the most severe measures the courts can impose on a US
citizen.
Our investigation has revealed how an established network of
guardians, lawyers, and expert witnesses, appearing frequently before
the same judges in local courts across the country, are often paid from
the estate of the person whose freedom is on the line, creating many
possible conflicts of interest. Guardians who work for the state get
paid from government funds, sometimes overseeing hundreds of people at a
time. Other wards are consigned to the care of untrained volunteers or
family members. All scenarios can leave vulnerable people susceptible to
abuse.
Debra Slater, an attorney who has handled hundreds of
guardianship cases in Florida, said the system is intended to help
people who cannot help themselves and added that the majority of
guardians and lawyers work hard to ensure people in their care live the
fullest lives possible. But abuses can occur, she acknowledged. “For my
whole professional life, I’ve been speaking for those who cannot speak
for themselves,” Slater said. “It is very frustrating to spend your life
trying to do that and then to see others taking advantage and doing
harm to those who need protection most.”
People whom the courts
have declared to be incapacitated rarely lead straightforward lives.
Wynter has serious mental health issues; Keegan has ongoing struggles
with alcoholism. Caring for people under those circumstances is
undoubtedly challenging. Their cases also show how people coping with
complex life challenges can get trapped in guardianships that are
dangerously ill suited to their actual needs and deny them what some
experts call the “dignity of risk”: the right to make their own choices,
both good and bad.
For Keegan and Wynter, guardianship meant
being denied one of the most fundamental rights of all: to be with the
person you love.
Neither had a fairy-tale marriage, but their
cases raise the question of when, if ever, a third party should get to
decide whether two adults deserve to be together.
When Keegan’s relatives found out he had married Steele, a Kenyan
American trainee nurse, they hired lawyers to persuade a judge to put
him under guardianship, blocking her access to money the family expected
to inherit. Lawyers cited alcoholism and his marriage to a woman they
claimed was encouraging him to drink and stealing his money as proof
that he was incapable of making his own decisions. Along the way, they
referred incorrectly to Steele as Keegan’s “mail-order wife” and falsely
alleged he was being “grifted by Nigerian women,” records show. He was
locked in a series of homes for people with severe mental impairment,
while annual accounting records show his guardians spent more than
$400,000 of his savings in fees and other guardianship expenses.
As a teenager living in poverty, Wynter was placed under the
permanent control of a guardian without a court hearing. For months, she
begged to be released from a residential facility where she said she
was “in so much damn pain” and “getting worse every day.” After BuzzFeed
News started looking into her claims, a state agency launched an
investigation and found that staffers there had abused and neglected
her.
The public rarely hears from people under guardianship, but
Keegan and Wynter overcame tremendous odds to speak to BuzzFeed News
about their experiences over more than seven months. They hid their
communications from guardians, concealing burner phones and secretly
logging on to computers. Many of the people who have been instrumental
in keeping them under guardianship said it had provided them the
stability they very much needed. The benefits of guardianship were
obvious, they said, and claims to the contrary were lies or delusions
that should not be trusted. BuzzFeed News reviewed thousands of pages of
documents and conducted dozens of interviews to report on their cases.
Keegan’s and Wynter’s desperate attempts to break free — or even to
seize a simple moment of freedom, such as riding a bike or stealing a
kiss — further cemented their fates. Only one of them would escape.
Courtesy Doug Keegan
Doug Keegan and Monica Steele
Keegan first heard he was facing guardianship when a stranger
turned up at his door a few weeks after his wedding, in November 2014.
Dressed in a suit, with graying hair and a gravelly voice, he introduced
himself as Calvin Horvath, Keegan’s new court-appointed attorney.
Keegan’s
family had filed a petition asking the court to place him under
emergency guardianship, Horvath explained. They said that he had been
incapacitated by years of excessive drinking and his new wife was trying
to steal his money.
Keegan did not deny his troubles with drinking, which included
several hospitalizations for severe alcohol poisoning and a DUI. He’d
had spells in Alcoholics Anonymous but said he found the emphasis on a
higher power off-putting, so he tried to control his drinking on his
own. He was blindsided by his family’s move. “My background is I’m an
alcoholic, but there’s nothing wrong with my mind,” he said. “I’m as
sharp as a tack.”
After working all over the world as an
electrical engineer, Keegan had retired in his early 50s to a
three-bedroom condo in Orlando with soaring cathedral ceilings. He met
his wife when he got lonely and advertised for housemates online. Monica
Steele was an energetic trainee nurse in her late 30s who had emigrated
from Kenya a decade earlier and become a US citizen. Romance quickly
blossomed.
She said she loved it when he sang to her — “Tomorrow” from Annie
was her favorite — and laughed at his jokes until she cried. Keegan
cooked up hamburgers and steaks, and she introduced him to Kenyan
staples like boiled beans with corn and peppers. He still had lapses
into heavy drinking, and the relationship could get stormy, but both
said Steele pushed him to stay healthy. They went to the gym together,
and he taught her to ride a bike. “She was someone to share life with,”
Keegan said.
When he told his relatives he had married Steele, he said, he expected some backlash, but not its ferocity.
His
brother Kevin Keegan turned up at their house, the couple said,
claiming Steele had only married him for money and a green card. Steele,
who already had US citizenship, said she was outraged. “I loved him,”
she said. “He's a very good person and a very, very intelligent man.”
But the rest of the family soon joined in.
“My family didn’t like me marrying a Black girl,” Doug said.
The
family painted a starkly different picture of the relationship in court
filings and in responses to questions from BuzzFeed News, maintaining
that the marriage was a sham and that they were trying to rescue Keegan
from an exploitative situation. “My brother Douglas is the gift that
just keeps on giving,” Kevin wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. “Most
of the family took turns trying to help Doug but like many alcoholics he
resists AA and other available help. All the unfortunate things that
have occurred to him are his own making.”
A lawyer representing
Kevin challenged the suggestion that the family had objected to
Steele’s race. “The truth is that Douglas has battled inner demons for
quite some time now,” the lawyer wrote, adding that “Monica didn’t seem
to help.”
“This is a complicated situation and the family has
stepped in for his interest doing the best they could to help a loved
person,” he added.
Both Keegan and Steele strongly denied that she
had ever taken advantage of him. But Keegan said his relatives had
never shown much interest in him before, and part of him had wanted to
believe they cared. It was true that Steele was less frugal than he was;
she wanted him to buy her a car, he said, and he refused. He figured
those kinds of tensions were normal in any marriage, he said, but he
agreed to his brother’s request to talk to a lawyer about “some sort of
protection, like a postnuptial agreement.”
Emails between the
newlyweds show tensions building up. “I am heartbroken and not sure
what’s going on with the so-called Attorney and your family,” Steele
wrote to Keegan. “I know they’re trying to create enemity [sic]
between us because i am a black woman.” Keegan said he and Steele both
sometimes wondered if it would be easier just to end the marriage, but
they resolved to try to make it work.
The lawyer, Dean Turman, talked to Keegan about drawing up a will
bequeathing his wealth to his siblings, records show. Keegan figured
that was fair for the time being, since his marriage was only a few
weeks old. He also signed a power of attorney — believing, he said, that
it would be used to make an asset protection plan. “I didn’t perceive
the threat,” he told BuzzFeed News, speaking over a burner phone.
Billing
records reveal that Turman and Kevin had already met privately to
discuss plans to put Keegan under some kind of guardianship — although
the lawyer noted that he seemed “competent.” Using the power of attorney
Keegan had signed, Turman froze his accounts, telling his bank that he
was “the subject of exploitation by a woman that he has met on the
internet.” Then he filed a guardianship petition on the family’s behalf,
alleging that Steele had used deception to “induce the proposed Ward to
marry her” and had encouraged Keegan to drink so she could steal his
money.
Turman declined to respond to detailed questions from
BuzzFeed News. He said aspects of this story were “absolutely false” but
refused to specify his concerns.
Keegan was outraged and said he
had told his lawyer to fight the incapacity petition all the way.
Instead, records reveal how the actions of Horvath, along with Turman
and other professionals in the case, paved the way for Keegan to lose
his rights. In the first full year of the guardianship alone, they were
collectively paid $140,000 from his accounts. Horvath refused to answer
detailed questions from BuzzFeed News, citing confidentiality.
Keegan’s predicament reflects an all-too-common occurrence across the
US, in which people facing complex personal challenges can become
trapped in a system with no one fighting for their wishes.
Florida’s laws, like those of most other states,
say judges should establish guardianships only when no less restrictive
option is possible. But the hearings in which they are decided can
conclude in just a few minutes without the consideration of any
alternatives. Many states
allow petitions to put people under a guardianship to be heard on an
emergency “ex parte” basis — a measure that can be necessary in extreme
cases where someone may pose an imminent danger to themselves or others.
But that procedure can be misused to strip people of their rights
without any advance warning or any chance to speak up on their own
behalf. And once a person has been declared incapacitated, they generally lose their right to contract, so in most states they can’t appoint their own lawyer to speak up for them, either.
Guardianship statutes often allow
court-appointed lawyers to make their own determinations about what is
in the ward’s best interests, regardless of what the person wants. But
that’s not the case in Florida, where the law
is intended to give people who have been found incapacitated more of a
voice. “If the ward expresses a wish to resist the guardianship, the
attorney should zealously advocate for that,” Anthony Palmieri, the
state’s leading guardianship investigator, told BuzzFeed News. “Does
that always happen? No.”
Keegan said it was his understanding that
he didn’t have to attend his first court date, and that Horvath had
reassured him that a full hearing would follow after a panel of doctors
had examined him. But that first hearing turned out to be critical.
Lawyers for the family told the judge that Keegan was a “chronic
alcoholic” and repeated their claim that Steele was stealing from him.
Keegan had sobered up recently, they said, but that was only because his
relatives had stepped in to help him. Keegan acknowledged in later
filings that his alcoholism was “a health issue” that he was “well
aware of” — but he said it had been used as a “pretext” for his family’s
efforts to take control of his life. “Guardianship is not a substance
abuse program,” he wrote.
On the day of the hearing, Horvath
read out excerpts of an email in which his client said that he would be
happy to accept some help from his relatives but he was not
incapacitated. “I do not believe guardianship is the best answer,”
Keegan had written. “I want to believe it is in my best interest to have
primary control over my financial and personal interests.”
But in
contrast to his client’s stated wishes, Horvath told the court it would
be “appropriate” to appoint Keegan's stepfather as his emergency
temporary guardian.
The judge agreed to place Keegan under emergency guardianship “because of all these parasites gnawing at the door.”
Later,
when Keegan found out that his own lawyer had agreed to the
arrangement, he said his wishes had been deliberately “misrepresented”
in “a mockery of due process, transparency, and rule of law.”
But that came too late. Addressing Keegan’s stepfather, the judge said, “You will possess all of his rights at this point.” (Click to continue reading)
Today, Bobby Schindler, President of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope
Network, testified before the Ohio Senate Health Committee on Senate
Bill 151, commonly known as Emery and Elliot’s Law.
Erika Jayne's estranged husband Tom Girardi moved into a senior living facility in California on Aug. 9, a report says
Jayne was notified of the move via mail, according to court documents
Girardi was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia earlier this year
Erika
Jayne's estranged husband Tom Girardi has moved out of his mansion in
Los Angeles and into a senior living facility amid his legal woes.
According to the court documents obtained by Us Weekly
Friday, the former attorney, 82, moved into a facility specializing in
memory care in Burbank, California, on Aug. 9. His brother and
conservator, Robert Girardi, informed the "Real Housewives of Beverly
Hills" star of the move via mail, the documents said.
Tom's other brother, Jack, and his two daughters and son were also notified of his new residence, Page Six reported.
Robert
was granted a temporary conservatorship over his brother in February. A
mental evaluation given at the time assessed that Tom, who lost his law
license, was suffering from late-onset Alzheimer’s disease and
dementia.
While the former lawyer told the court in June that he
"disagree[d] with the conservatorship altogether," Robert was named the
permanent conservator of Tom's person and estate the following month.
Jayne
filed for divorce from Tom in November 2020 after 21 years of marriage.
A month later, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the pair
accusing them of embezzling funds intended for the families of plane
crash victims "in order to continue funding his and Erika's lavish
Beverly Hills lifestyles," documents obtained by People read.
Jayne
has insisted that she had no knowledge of her estranged husband's legal
troubles. In an episode of the "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills"
Season 11, she insisted that their divorce was not a "sham."
"Being
the possible target of a federal criminal investigation is like, not
cool," Jayne was quoted by Us Weekly as saying. "To have all those
things said about you which are not true, and then to have everyone,
basically, question everything. It’s lonely and it’s quiet and you would
be shocked by how quickly people turn on you. How quickly people
distance themselves from you. Automatically, they turn because they
don’t want to be involved."
During a more recent episode, Jayne claimed that she hasn't spoken to Tom since she moved out of their home.
In August, the trustee handling the bankruptcy case of her ex's law firm Girardi Keese sued Jayne for $25 million, which was the amount she allegedly spent on an American Express bill and glam squad, among other charges.
For people under guardianship, the system can be dehumanizing, dangerous, and even deadly. For the professionals — who can control hundreds of people at a time — it can be very profitable. A BuzzFeed News investigation.
By Heidi Blake and Katie J.M. Baker
They can isolate you: A teenager with cerebral palsy was snatched from the school gates and hidden from his parents.
They can bleed you dry: A successful rheumatologist was declared incapacitated after a bout of depression and lost her million-dollar waterfront home.
And they can leave you to die: A 46-year-old man died under a do-not-resuscitate order that went against the desperate pleas of his wife.
All three nightmares share a common cause: These people had been
placed under the care — and control — of legal guardians. America’s
guardianship system was designed as a last resort
to be used only in the rare and drastic event that someone is totally
incapacitated by mental or physical disability. In those cases,
conscientious guardians can provide vital support, often in complex and
distressing circumstances. But an investigation by BuzzFeed News has
found that the system has grown into a vast, lucrative, and poorly
regulated industry that has subsumed more than a million people, many of
whom insist they are capable of making their own decisions, and placed
them at risk of abuse, theft, and even death.
The #FreeBritney movement
has drawn international attention to the case of Britney Spears, and
wrongdoing by individual guardians has surfaced in the past, but our
investigation reveals the systemic failings behind these isolated
stories.
In local courts across the country — often woefully unfit for the
sweeping power they command — guardians, lawyers, and expert witnesses
appear frequently before the same judges in an established network of
overlapping financial and professional interests. They are often paid
from the estate of the person whose freedom is on the line, creating
powerful incentives to form guardianships and keep them in place.
“The
judge knows the lawyers, the lawyers know each other,” said J. Ronald
Denman, a former state prosecutor and Florida lawyer who has contested
dozens of guardianships over the past decade. “The amount of abuse is
crazy. You’re going against a rigged system.”
Without being
convicted of any crime, those declared incapacitated face some of the
most severe measures that the courts can take against any US citizen.
Most freedoms articulated in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights are denied to people under full guardianship: They can lose their rights
to vote, marry, start a family, decide where they live, consent to
medical treatment, spend their money, seek employment, or own property.
Thousands of professional guardians, lawyers, and corporations now hold sway over assets totaling tens of billions
of dollars. Some guardians have hundreds of people under their control.
And despite the public perception that guardianship is a protective
measure for older adults nearing death, the system traps huge numbers of young people.
BuzzFeed News has scoured hundreds of thousands of court documents,
obtained confidential mental health filings and financial records,
examined hundreds of guardianship cases, gathered exclusive data from
extensive public records requests, conducted hundreds of interviews, and
carried out a detailed review of guardianship laws in all 50 states.
Our investigation reveals an opaque, overgrown, and malfunctioning
system wielding vast and frightening power in the dark.
People
have been abused, neglected, and killed while living under
guardianship. BuzzFeed News identified 20 cases in which young or
middle-aged people died under questionable circumstances, including
murder, severe neglect, or malnourishment. A 31-year-old man was abused
by care home staff and buried in concrete for months before his guardian
realized he was missing. No charges were brought against her and she is
still in charge of 130 people.
People under guardianship
— commonly referred to as wards — have been locked up and isolated from
their families and friends, with guardians obtaining restraining orders
to keep loved ones at bay. One professional guardian who concealed the
whereabouts of a woman’s teenage son declared “I’m mom now” and said she
had no problem “taking the noose around” the mother’s “neck and
tightening it” to keep them apart, a nurse alleged in court filings.
In
many states, guardians can force wards to undergo invasive medical
procedures including the implantation of contraceptive devices — and in
several cases, wards were permanently sterilized.
Court
clerks have failed to perform vital checks in hundreds of cases, and lax
vetting has left vulnerable people in troubling hands. The owner of one
major guardianship corporation was given control of hundreds of wards —
including young people — despite having been repeatedly accused of
domestic abuse and assault involving children.
Guardians
have had scores of younger people placed under do-not-resuscitate orders
(DNRs) — including some who have a mental illness but are physically
healthy — blocking their access to potentially lifesaving treatment if
they fall seriously ill. Several middle-aged people, including a former
space shuttle scientist, have died under these orders, sometimes without
the courts being informed.
Professional guardians have
stolen tens of millions of dollars from hundreds of people and exploited
obscure trust fund laws to conceal their financial activity from the
courts. One guardianship nonprofit drained the accounts of more than 800
people, while another professional guardian transferred money from
several of her wards’ accounts into a trust controlled by her husband.
Other
wards say they have been trapped under the guardianship of controlling
relatives who strangled their ability to have social or romantic
relationships, choose where they live, or express their true gender
identity.
The public rarely hears from people who have
been stripped of their rights given the significant restrictions they
live under, but in an ongoing series, BuzzFeed News will report on the
cases of wards who endured harrowing ordeals while under the control of
private, public, and family guardians.
BuzzFeed News reviewed
details of more than 200 guardianships involving young and middle-aged
people across more than 30 states. In 130 of those cases — gleaned from
court documents, interviews, first-person testimony, and local news
reports — we found evidence suggesting that wards were exposed to
financial exploitation, and 110 may have suffered abuse or neglect.
There were nearly 50 claims that people had been isolated from friends
and family, and dozens of reports that people were confined against
their will. In scores of cases, people were put under guardianship based
on a questionable finding of incapacity. Many cases indicated that
wards had experienced several of these alleged harms at once.
No comprehensive data
exists on the guardianship system, and courts in many states keep case
documents under seal, making it impossible to say for sure how many
people are under its control. Estimates have put the number of adult guardianship cases at more than one million — a figure that experts say is rising.
BuzzFeed News filed public records requests to all 50 states and the
District of Columbia to create an unprecedented dataset on the number of
cases being opened across the country each year. Fewer than half of the
states had fully usable data, but BuzzFeed News consulted statisticians
to develop a national estimate based on the figures provided. Our analysis suggests that as many as 200,000 adult guardianship cases are filed per year.
People
whose capacity is in question are often struggling with physical and
mental conditions that make caring for them unquestionably difficult.
But guardianship is such an extreme measure that in most states,
judges are required by law not to impose it unless no other options are
available. Too often, however, they opt for full guardianship in
hearings that can last just minutes, without considering any
alternatives. Many state laws
allow hearings that determine if someone is incapacitated to be held
without notifying the person in question, meaning someone can be placed
under emergency guardianship without having an opportunity to fight
back. Some people are placed under guardianship without even undergoing a
medical examination. And people who have been declared incapacitated
generally lose the right to appoint their own lawyers or represent
themselves, which means that once guardianships are in place, they are
often impossible to escape.
The loss of liberty is particularly
consequential for people who have not yet had a chance at adult life.
Many young Americans with disabilities are funneled into guardianship as
soon as they turn 18 as part of what the National Council on Disability calls
a “school-to-guardianship pipeline.” Most 18- to 22-year-olds who
receive publicly funded services for intellectual and developmental
disabilities have guardians.
Others
have been declared incapacitated because of conditions that can often
be managed, such as depression, PTSD, autism, physical disability, or
addiction.
And for professionals who are unscrupulous, younger wards with access
to large inheritances or personal injury payments can represent the
most lucrative cases of all, because they have decades ahead during
which the guardian can keep billing.
With no federal laws to govern guardians, the powers given to them can vary dramatically: In more than 10 states, the law grants full guardians the same powers over a ward as a parent has over an “unemancipated minor child.” Illinois judges may give guardians “custody of the ward's minor and adult dependent children.” Guardians in Arkansas can put wards in the county jail “for safekeeping,” and in Texas, they can lock wards in psychiatric hospitals before asking for court approval.
Many professional guardians work hard to care for clients who
genuinely can’t care for themselves. Others are committed family members
looking after vulnerable loved ones in exceptionally difficult
situations.
But Shannon Butler, a “master guardian”
and board member with the National Guardianship Association, said
judges are too quick to put people under full guardianship because “It’s
just easier for them, and honestly, it's easier for us too.”
The association has clear standards
that guardianship should only be considered as a last option. “We
should only be using those powers that are absolutely necessary,” she
said. “A good guardian is actually working towards getting their wards
out of guardianship.”
Yet flaws in the system leave “room for
abuse,” Butler said. “If you’re somebody that’s predatory and you get
into this business,” she added, “it’s scary.”
WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING
Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News
Elizabeth Hensley was stripped of her rights and put under
guardianship by a judge while she was receiving treatment for depression
in a Florida hospital.
The
59-year-old acknowledged she had autism and mental health difficulties,
but begged the judge not to take away her rights. “I really do not need
a guardian!” she wrote to the court, pleading to be allowed to return
to her home where her partner, “precious cats and the garden” were
waiting for her. But her pleas were denied.
Hensley was assigned a
professional guardian who was meant to help her. Instead, she
complained, she was kept under “lockdown” while court filings show the
guardian paid herself from Hensley’s accounts without court permission.
Florida’s guardianship industry is among the most bloated outgrowths of the system, with more than 500 professional guardians
and hundreds more lawyers who draw their income from vulnerable people
across the state. Hensley had fallen into the hands of one of the most
notorious.
Marion County Sheriff's Office
Rebecca Fierle made millions while controlling the lives and finances of more than 500 people before she was charged
last year with abuse and neglect of an older adult ward who died after
she had him placed under a DNR and allegedly told doctors to cap his
feeding tube. When police raided her office, they found urns containing
the cremated remains of nine former wards on display. An analysis of
thousands of court records by BuzzFeed News sheds new light on her
practices.
Though Fierle marketed herself as a specialist in care
for older adults, around a third of her wards at the time of her arrest
had been placed under her guardianship in their youth or middle age. She
sold people’s homes, cars, and belongings to pay her bills and moved
hundreds of thousands of dollars from their accounts into opaque trust
funds that shielded her from court scrutiny. More than $660,000 of
Hensley’s money was moved into a trust that a 2019 audit
found Fierle used to pay herself without court approval. Court auditors
were able to track several thousand dollars Fierle had directed to
herself and her business from Hensley’s accounts, but they noted that
she had failed to provide records for numerous other transactions.
Fierle
declined to respond to detailed questions from BuzzFeed News but has
previously denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the abuse and
neglect charges. She told court auditors who flagged multiple concerns
about her use of Hensley’s funds that all her spending was “for the
ward’s benefit,” but she couldn’t prove it because her paperwork had
been seized by law enforcement.
Like Hensley, many of Fierle’s
wards were diagnosed with mental rather than physical ailments,
including depression, bipolar disorder, and alcohol addiction. But
records reveal she had dozens of young and middle aged people placed
under DNRs and diverted thousands of dollars from their estates to buy
prepaid burial plans from two favored local funeral homes — in one case
for an 18-year-old with bipolar disorder and ADHD.
Judges eventually revoked nearly 100 DNRs in Fierle’s cases — but
records show it was too late to free at least two of those wards from
those orders. Unbeknown to the courts, Penny Pilkington, a 56-year-old
woman with developmental disabilities, and Drazen Premate, a 63-year-old
former space shuttle scientist who had schizophrenia, were already
dead.
Other professions that yield such large financial rewards
and power over the lives of vulnerable people — like law or medicine —
typically require years of intensive training and extensive vetting. But
guardianship generally demands neither.
In some states, guardians
(sometimes referred to as conservators) control both a ward’s personal
life and their money, while others assign a separate person to manage
financial matters. These roles can be assumed without a degree in law,
social work, or accounting — and some states require no more than a few
hours of education before guardians are empowered to assume control of
people’s lives.
Guardians are required to file annual reports on
their wards' well-being and financial affairs, often reviewed by
low-paid, overstretched court clerks who lack formal training in
spotting fraud. Many clerks are also charged with vetting people seeking
to become professional guardians — but troubling cases can slip
through.
In Minnesota, records reveal the owner of a major guardianship
corporation was placed in charge of hundreds of vulnerable people
despite pleading guilty to domestic assault in 2004 after her son told
police she threw him on the floor, slammed him against the wall, and
called him a “shit head.” Rebecca Reich, who owns the firm Guardian and
Conservator Services, had also been arrested the previous year for
allegedly telling another child to get a knife from the drawer and kill
her then-boyfriend, though no charges were brought. Court filings detail
other allegations of domestic abuse involving her son.
The
Minnesota Judicial Branch declined to comment on Reich’s case but said
background checks are run every two years and provided to judges who use
them to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to appoint guardians.
Reich’s
father, a retired local judge who now represents her guardianship firm,
responded to questions from BuzzFeed News on her behalf. He said she
had pleaded guilty to assault only to spare her son the distress of
testifying in court and the case was dismissed without an adjudication
of guilt after she met her parole conditions. Reich’s father said she
disputed all the allegations, which arose during a messy divorce, and
reiterated that no charges had been brought against her. She had been
fully vetted, he said, and currently serves on the statute committee of
the Minnesota Association for Guardianship and Conservatorship. “The
background concerns that you raise are incomplete, contested, and do not
reflect years of subsequent competent and compassionate service,” he
wrote.
In Florida, Fierle’s wrongdoing went unchecked for more than a
decade. Court clerks had failed to raise warning signs, and regulators
did not respond in a timely manner to reports about Fierle’s suspect
practices. After her arrest, the head of the Florida Department of Elder
Affairs said that the Office of Public and Professional Guardians —
whose four employees were tasked with overseeing the conduct of hundreds of guardians across the state — had a backlog of 80 open investigations.
This spring, the comptroller of Orange County, where Fierle controlled the lives of more than 100 people, issued a damning 86-page report
warning that overworked and ill-qualified court clerks were failing to
subject guardians to basic scrutiny, such as criminal records checks.
Some guardians had failed to report on the well-being of their wards for
years without the clerks raising any concerns. Guardians had paid
themselves from wards' estates without court approval and moved money
into trusts without filing mandatory paperwork. The Orange County Clerk
of Courts told BuzzFeed News she disagreed with many of the report’s
findings, but had made recent improvements including adding more deputy
clerks to the guardianship team and providing training in general
accounting principles and reviewing internal procedures.
BuzzFeed News identified more than 130 cases across the country in
which evidence suggested young or middle-aged wards were exposed to
financial malpractice, including 50 cases involving trust funds, which
can be used to shield guardians from court scrutiny.
One professional guardian moved money belonging to several of her wards into Florida trusts before successfully petitioning
the courts to release her of any obligation to account for future
spending because she said the money was no longer under her control. But
in three of those cases, the funds had been moved into a trust controlled by her husband. The conflict of interest was highlighted
in the report by Orange County investigators this spring, without
naming the guardian concerned. BuzzFeed News has identified her as Theresa Barton,
a professional who has controlled the lives of wards in Florida for 25
years. Her husband, Nick Barton, runs a non-profit that controls a pooled special needs trust used by guardians across the state to store wards’ funds. The Bartons did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Another Florida guardian, Teri St. Hilaire, has faced scrutiny over alleged financial irregularities
involving more than 60 of her wards — including a 29-year-old man with
funds of more than $2 million following a personal injury settlement.
Records show St. Hilaire established a trust with his money and charged
fees of more than $70,000 by the time regulators launched
an investigation into the “wellbeing and financial affairs” of scores
of people in her care last year. The probe concluded in May, and a
report was sent to the Office of Public and Professional Guardians, but
its findings have been designated confidential. Meanwhile, St. Hilaire
continues to wield power over the wards who remain in her control. She
did not respond to requests for comment from BuzzFeed News.
Guardians
are often legally empowered to liquidate wards’ assets to pay their own
bills — and BuzzFeed News identified cases where people lost almost
everything they owned. Among them was a rheumatologist in her 50s who
was placed under guardianship after experiencing a bout of depression
during acrimonious divorce proceedings in 2019. Her professional
guardian had her placed against her will in a lockdown facility while
arranging the sale of her $1 million waterfront home and other
belongings. By the time she was released from guardianship eight months
later, the guardian and her lawyers had charged more than $100,000 in
fees and expenses. The guardian refused to comment.
In New Mexico,
the owners of the nonprofit Ayudando Guardians embezzled around $10
million from more than 800 clients, spending the stolen funds
on expensive cars, luxury homes, Las Vegas shopping sprees, and exotic
holidays to the Caribbean and Hawaii. Court clerks had spotted no red
flags in any of the firm’s financial filings, leaving the abuse to
continue unchecked for more than a decade until junior employees blew
the whistle. The firm’s president was finally sentenced to prison in July, but by then there was almost nothing left in the accounts of any of Ayudando’s wards.
As
well as serving as guardian, conservator, or trustee for hundreds of
“private pay” clients, Ayudando was paid millions of dollars by New
Mexico’s Office of Guardianship to take over the lives and finances of
people living in poverty.
THE POOR CAN VANISH
Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News
Private guardians can profit from wards with access to large
amounts of cash and valuable assets, but people with little money who
get sucked into the state-run guardianship system are also vulnerable to
abuse — and may be more easily overlooked.
Carl DeBrodie was a
happy and high-spirited child with multiple developmental disabilities
when he was first placed under the guardianship of Mary Martin, who said
she raised him in a loving home with his own pet horse. But she didn’t
realize she and her husband had to apply to be his guardians after he
became an adult, she told BuzzFeed News, so DeBrodie eventually came
under the control of a public guardian named Karen Digh Allen.
In
Missouri, elected public administrators handle the cases of
incapacitated people without financial resources or anyone else to care
for them. Allen has overseen hundreds of wards in Callaway County since 1997. As DeBrodie’s guardian, she was responsible for ensuring he received proper medical care and lived in a safe and comfortable setting.
Debrodie
was placed in a group home named Second Chance. While he lived there,
Martin reported seeing him covered in cuts and bruises. After she
reported the alleged injuries, she was banned from seeing DeBrodie,
according to her testimony in confidential court records obtained by
BuzzFeed News. Martin applied to adopt him as an adult, but Allen filed
an objection.
A law professor named Mary Beck who was appointed by the court to
determine DeBrodie’s best interests in the adoption case concluded that
he wanted to live with Martin and her husband, who he knew as “Mom” and
“Dad.” In the confidential report, she also noted what she saw as a
“conflict of interest”: Allen’s longtime deputy had a second job working
for Second Chance. Allen later said that homes like Second Chance had a financial incentive to hold on to clients, according to the Fulton Sun: "The amount of money paid almost creates a scenario that invites deception if you don't have good people in there.”
The judge ruled against the adoption, and the Martins said they never saw DeBrodie again.
“Why keep him from a home where he was loved, where he wanted to be?” Beck said to BuzzFeed News regarding Allen’s objections.
Carl DeBrodie
DeBrodie had been missing for around seven months when his remains
were found encased in concrete in a storage unit in April 2017. He had
been made to sleep in a staffer’s basement, and denied medical care when
his health deteriorated. He died just two blocks from Allen’s office.
Second Chance staffers hid his body and then falsified medical documents describing him enjoying snacks and dancing to music in order to keep collecting over $100,000 from Medicaid for his care.
Multiple
Second Chance staffers went on to plead guilty in connection to
DeBrodie’s death in what a judge called “one of the most deplorable,
depraved and disturbing” cases he’d ever heard.
Allen refused to
answer questions about her role in DeBrodie’s case. “In 25 years, I’ve
always been neutral,” she said, adding that it was the judge’s decision
to deny the adoption she contested, not hers. She said she was involved
in efforts to strengthen guardianship policy both state and nationwide.
She was originally named in the civil lawsuit but was dismissed
as part of a settlement agreement with the county. Her lawyer argued
she could not have known about DeBrodie’s abuse or death given Second
Chance’s elaborate cover-up.
She still holds her elected office and currently
oversees 130 people. In May this year, Allen was named Missouri’s
public administrator of the year as well as Callaway County's April employee of the month. “Allen is a great example of an employee who goes above and beyond every day,” the announcement said.
Public
guardianships for people who have little or no money form a significant
part of the industry. Across America, young people in group homes,
specialist schools, or foster placements have been pushed straight into
guardianships as soon as they turn 18.
“In
a lot of cases, it’s just reflexive,” said disability rights attorney
Viviana Bonilla López. Parents of children with disabilities turning 18
are often told
by doctors, teachers, or lawyers that they will lose any say in their
care unless they get a guardianship. What they don’t know is that, as
soon as they’re in the system, the judge can push the parents aside and
appoint a professional — even a stranger — in their place. “Parents say,
‘I don’t know how this happened. I didn’t mean to do this. Help me get
them out,’” Bonilla López said. But by then, it’s often too late.
Public
guardians are typically paid by the state to take on wards only if no
one else is willing to do so. In such cases, judges frequently favor the
total removal of the ward’s rights. Young adults who enter guardianship
can find that they are in it for life.
BuzzFeed News reviewed
details of 19 cases in which wards were allegedly abused, neglected,
isolated from friends or family, wrongly stripped of their rights, or
killed while under the control of public guardians. (Click to continue reading)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis man is in jail after police said he spent
months swindling drivers out of hundreds of dollars in the Midtown
area. MPD said Joe Boyce pretended to be a mechanic but never made any
repairs.
Memphis Police say back in August, Boyce approached a woman leaving
The Home Depot on Poplar Avenue. Court documents said he told her that
her transmission fluid was leaking.
After looking under her hood, police say Boyce told her he was a mechanic and could repair her vehicle.
MPD said Boyce drove the victim to a store where he told her the
parts would cost $1,400. Documents said the victim paid Boyce more than
$1,800 dollars for parts and repairs.
Reports say the victim eventually took her car to her normal mechanic
who found absolutely no work had been done to her vehicle.
MPD said this was not the first time they heard of Boyce’s antics. On
another occasion, police said Boyce approached a man in another parking
lot with a similar story.
Documents said Boyce requested six hundred dollars for those repairs
but settled on sixty-eight, some gas for his vehicle, and a pack of
cigarettes.
Boyce has now been charged with theft and financial exploitation of the elderly.
According to court documents, Boyce told investigators he was done
scamming people, and this would be his last time. He went on to say if
he thinks of anyone else that he owes money to, he’ll make sure to give
them a call.
Quametra Wilborn spoke to a legitimate mechanic who said he’s very familiar with this alleged fraud.
Joey
Barton Owner of Barton’s Car Care in Midtown says he knows a thing or
two about cars. He also knows a thing or two about scams especially
since he said many of his customers have been scammed by this man,
62-year-old Joe Boyce.
“Sometimes stuff does happen. You may go in a store and come out and
something really did happen to your car and it needs to be worked on,”
Barton said. “Nine times out of 10 that’s not the case.”
“It didn’t look like anything got taken out of any of them. Almost
every time it was just like fluid had been dumped underneath it,” Barton
said.
“Anywhere that’s certified, go have them look at your car,” Barton
said. “They’re who do it day in and day out. They’re not going to lie to
you just to get a dollar.”
Leader of International Robocall Scam Sentenced for Defrauding Over 4,000 U.S. Victims Out of More Than $10 Million
RICHMOND,
Va. – An Indian national was sentenced today to 22 years in prison for
conspiracy and identity theft in connection with his operation of an
overseas robocall scam that defrauded thousands of victims out of more
than $10 million.
“This defendant has been sentenced to 22 years in
prison for being the mastermind and leader of an extensive
multimillion-dollar robocall scheme that, from overseas, exploited over
4,000 American victims,” said Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia. “The impact of the harm inflicted on the
victims of these robocall schemes can be devastating. The victims, many
of whom are elderly, continue to endure significant financial hardship
from the defendant’s vast fraud enterprise. The defendant operated and
supervised the call center, was the ‘closer’ when speaking to victims,
and managed the money couriers who illegally sent millions of stolen and
hard-earned funds belonging to the victims back to his call center.
When you consider the sheer number of victims this defendant extorted
and the magnitude of their losses, the scale of harm and pain he caused
is enormous. As this case demonstrates, we will continue to work closely
with our partners to investigate, apprehend, and prosecute
transnational criminal enterprises that steal from vulnerable American
victims, and will bring the perpetrators of these scams to justice no
matter where they are located.”
According to court documents, Shehzadkhan Pathan,
40, operated a call center in Ahmedabad, India, from which automated
robocalls were made to victims in the United States. After establishing
contact with victims through these automated calls, Pathan and other
“closers” at his call center would coerce, cajole, and trick victims
into sending bulk cash through physical shipments and electronic money
transfers. Pathan and his conspirators used a variety of schemes to
convince victims to send money, including impersonating law enforcement
officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) and representatives of other government
agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, to threaten
victims with severe legal and financial consequences. Conspirators also
convinced victims to send money as initial installments for falsely
promised loans.
“Fraud targeting the elderly has a uniquely
harmful effect on a segment of the population that is often amongst
society's most vulnerable. This conspiracy, which defrauded over 4,000
victims, many of whom were elderly, out of at least $10 million, is
again an unfortunate reminder of the type of devastation these fraud
schemes can wreak,” said Wayne A. Jacobs, Special Agent in Charge of the
FBI Washington Field Office Criminal/Cyber Division. “Pathan, a leader
of this scheme, which relied on impersonating law enforcement to
threaten victims, is the 4th individual sentenced in this investigation
and represents a step forward in our efforts to hold those who engage in
these scams accountable to the fullest extent of the law. The FBI's
work in this area is far from over as we remain steadfast in our
commitment to relentlessly pursue these types of investigations to
ensure the protection of the hard-earned livelihood of our nation's
elderly.”
In addition to operating the call center, Pathan
recruited and supervised a multitude of money couriers, whom he directed
to receive money sent by victims. Pathan’s network of money couriers
was located in multiple states, including but not limited to Virginia,
New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, California, South Carolina, and Illinois.
Pathan assigned various aliases to these individuals and supplied them
with hundreds of counterfeit identification documents to facilitate
their receipt of victim cash shipments and money transfers. Pathan then
directed the couriers to send the money to himself and other
conspirators through various means, including cash deposits into
numerous bank accounts and via informal money transmitters known as
Hawalas.
Pathan is the fourth of six defendants in this
case to be sentenced for their role in the conspiracy. Co-defendants
Pradipsinh Parmar, 41, and Sumer Patel, 38, both of Ahmedabad, India,
acted as money couriers during the conspiracy, and are scheduled to be
sentenced on September 20.
Combatting elder abuse and financial fraud
targeted at seniors is a key priority of the Department of Justice.
Elder abuse is an intentional or negligent act by any person that causes
harm or a serious risk of harm to an older adult. It is a term used to
describe five subtypes of elder abuse: physical abuse, financial fraud,
scams and exploitation, caregiver neglect and abandonment, psychological
abuse, and sexual abuse. Elder abuse is a serious crime against some of
our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, affecting at least 10 percent of
older Americans every year. Together with our federal, state, local,
and tribal partners, the Department of Justice is steadfastly committed
to combatting all forms of elder abuse and financial exploitation
through enforcement actions, training and resources, research, victim
services, and public awareness. This holistic and robust response
demonstrates the Department’s unwavering dedication to fighting for
justice for older Americans.
Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern
District of Virginia, and Wayne A. Jacobs, Special Agent in Charge of
the FBI Washington Field Office Criminal Division, made the announcement
after sentencing by Senior U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson.
The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Police Department provided significant assistance with this investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian R. Hood and Kaitlin G. Cooke are prosecuting the case.
A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 3:19-cr-160.
A Jefferson City man pleaded guilty to charges of stealing from an elderly person.
During
a hearing before Cole County Judge Dan Green, Jeffrey Randolph, 46,
pleaded guilty to felony charges of stealing and fraudulent use of a
credit device. A charge of financial exploitation of an elderly person
was dismissed by prosecutors. As a condition of his probation, Randolph
is to not have any contact with the victim.
The crimes occurred
between late December 2018 and late January 2019, according to a Cole
County Sheriff’s Department probable cause statement.
The
victim, who lived in the 1200 block of Freedom Boulevard, said she went
to her credit union to withdraw funds from her account but found she
had insufficient funds to make a withdrawal.
The woman said the
account she was trying to use belonged to her and her husband and had
not been used since August 2016. Money from her husband’s prior military
service went into the account.
Investigators found several
charges had been made on the account at the Hy-Vee gas station on West
Truman Boulevard. Video footage at the station reportedly showed
Randolph using the account to purchase fuel.
Investigators also found Randolph had used funds from the account for pest control services for his home.
When questioned by authorities, Randolph admitted to using a credit card that belonged to the victim.
