While difficult to fathom, there are those individuals among us who prey upon the elderly. In some cases, these individuals seek to exhort money and assets from unsuspecting older men and women who are made easy targets due to loneliness, dementia or failing health. In other cases, these unscrupulous individuals use undue influence and seek to coerce an elderly man or woman to name them as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy or write them into a will.
A 53-year-old health care provider and 61-year-old former lawyer recently pled guilty to criminal charges related to activities they carried out in an attempt to steal money from an elderly woman.
According to court documents, the 53-year-old worked for a home health care company and was entrusted to provide care for the elderly woman. While doing so, he and his 61-year-old accomplice convinced both the elderly woman and her daughter to invest more than $2 million dollars in a fake business entity which the two had established.
As the elderly woman’s health declined, the 53-year-old health care provider also convinced her to make him a beneficiary to a trust which her late husband had set up to provide for her care. As a result, the woman’s money quickly ran out and she and her daughter were forced out of their home which fell into foreclosure.
Sadly, the elderly woman died a year later. Her family filed an estate lawsuit on the woman’s behalf against the two men and were subsequently awarded a settlement in the amount of $7 million dollars. In addition, criminal charges related to fraud and tax evasion were filed against the men who now face a future behind bars.
Source: Alaska Dispatch, “Duo pleads guilty to duping elderly Alaskan out of entire nest egg,” Casey Grove, Sep. 24, 2013
