County officials focus on senior financial abuse

With an increasing number of adults living longer, the county is bound to see a 75 percent increase in adults age 65 and older by 2030 and the number of adults over 85 to more than double in the same timeframe, said Mancini. Though officials hope this jump in the population of older adults will lead to more people living longer, healthier lives, Mancini acknowledged the trend is likely to be accompanied by an uptick in the number of people eyeing their bank accounts or homes for personal gain.

“The good news is in San Mateo County we’re living longer,” she said, noting the trend may also account for the uptick in financial elder abuse observed in the county. “There’s a lot of wealth in this county and people are aware of that.”

And while seniors and dependent adults are at risk for a wide range of mistreatment, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse as well as neglect, they are increasingly becoming the targets of financial abuse, noted Mancini, who credited the growing population of older adults and the skyrocketing home values in the county with the shift.

Because it’s not always immediately apparent when a senior or dependent adult’s assets have been taken advantage of, financial abuse can be challenging to detect, explained Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Guidotti. Those hoping to exploit another person’s resources may opt to insulate them from the view of others in the hopes of siphoning funds from their savings or convincing them to sign their home over to another owner, said Guidotti, who added these schemes can take shape, undetected, over months and years.

Team formation

In recognition of the growing senior population in the county, Guidotti said some three years ago officials from the District Attorney’s Office, the County Counsel’s Office and County Health’s Aging and Adult Services starting scoping ways they could collaborate on instances of elder abuse they have observed in the county, forming the Elder and Dependent Adult Protection Team, or EDAPT.

With the goals of flagging potential instances of financial abuse early, connecting victims or those in need of them with supportive services and training law enforcement officers, Realtors, bankers and others working in the community to recognize threats to dependent adults, the team has been able to cut down on the response time to reports of financial elder abuse and stem the damage of these schemes, said Guidotti.

“Now we have those relationships established and we know exactly where to go and who to go to,” she said.

Guidotti recalled a case in which the team was able to act quickly across departments and stop the sale of a senior’s home before it was too late, noting once property changes hands, it can be very difficult to return those assets back to the original owner. She also acknowledged the team’s role in discovering in 2015 a Daly City attorney had been embezzling from a 92-year-old woman and her disabled and dependent son while acting as their financial and medical power of attorney.

Elder abuse unit

Over the course of four years, Albert Boasberg is believed to have taken nearly $500,000 from the elderly woman, who is living with dementia at the Marymount Greenhills Retirement Center in Millbrae, as well as her son, who is in his 60s and living at the Burlingame Long Term Care Center. The thefts were discovered when both facilities reported his failure to make monthly payments for their care to the County Health’s Adult Protective Services, which resulted in his removal as their power of attorney in 2015 and a yearslong investigation ending with felony charges being filed against him in May.

Having pleaded no contest to two counts of felony elder fiscal abuse and one count of insurance fraud in July, Boasberg faces three years in state prison when he returns to court in January for sentencing.

Guidotti said the Elder Abuse Unit at the District Attorney’s Office, which consists of two designated prosecutors and at least one investigator, has prosecuted some 218 cases of physical and financial elder abuse in collaboration with Aging and Adult Services, Adult Protective Services, the Public Guardian and the County Counsel. Some $1.8 million has been returned to victims through court-ordered restitution in the same timeframe, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Financial abuse

As a manager for County Health’s Adult Protective Services Division, Shannon Morgan has seen a growing interest in understanding potential threats to seniors on behalf of law enforcement, banks, hospitals and senior centers, among other institutions, in the last three years since she’s been involved with EDAPT’s work.

Morgan said in an email banks account for the highest number of reported incidents of suspected financial abuse, and said the EDAPT team has held several trainings with county bank employees to look out for unusual activity such as an uptick in ATM withdrawals when a customer usually writes checks, loan applications for an unspecified reason or transactions showing travel abroad when a customer is homebound or ill.

Because of the complexity of financial abuse crimes, Morgan said the EDAPT’s multidisciplinary approach brings resources and experts in several fields together to discuss trends they are observing and ways they can tackle emerging issues.

“Financial abuse crimes are exceptionally complex, paper heavy and often multi-jurisdictional,” she said in an email. “It benefits our residents to have professional staff available to assist them when they have been a victim of a financial crime.”

‘Looking out for our neighbors’

Mancini said county seniors’ ages range from 60 to over 110 and they have varying relationships with social media and email. Though they may be targeted by email scams, many seniors are aware they shouldn’t open suspicious emails, said Mancini, who said phone calls from scammers who say they represent a bank can be more difficult to for them to hang up on.

Mancini said simply looking out for neighbors, whether it’s noticing their mail is piling up outside or checking in from time to time to see how they’re doing, is among the best advice she can offer to those with seniors or dependent adults in their lives. She said those with concerns can make anonymous calls to the county’s TIES phone line 24 hours a day, seven days a week to report suspected abuse, seek referrals or ask questions about resources available for a loved one.

In addition to helping those who may have become victims of financial elder abuse, the county has several other resources aimed at helping seniors age in their communities, said Mancini. She said in-home supportive services, individualized case management and the Public Guardian, which can step in as a conservator of a person’s assets if an individual doesn’t have the capacity to manage them, are among the resources available to seniors and dependent adults.

“Our mindset is to help that person remain in the community as long as possible,” she said. “It’s really just looking out for our neighbors.”

Visit smchealth.org/aging-and-adult-services-protection for more information on ways to protect yourself or a loved one from fraud. Call the county’s TIES line at 1-800-675-8437 to speak confidentially with a trained counselor.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 106