FIFTEEN DIRTY TRICKS OF GUARDIANSHIP IN COOK COUNTY

FIFTEEN DIRTY TRICKS OF GUARDIANSHIP IN COOK COUNTY

From our Friends at NASGA (http://www.stopguardianabuse.org/):

Pinellas County Internal Auditor Robert W. Melton lectured at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg on: "Dirty Tricks of Guardianships – The Need for Change."

Here are just 10 of the "dirty tricks," as outlined by Pinellas County Internal Auditor Robert W. Melton taken from Justice for FL Senior's website:

1) Guardian creation of a trust: Remove all oversight by the court as a provision of the trust agreement; guardian becomes trustee; provide that the trustee can do whatever they want at their sole discretion.

2) Sell real estate at lowball price: Use "lowball" valuations as a benchmark; don't list property with Realtors; sell to a land trust, where nobody knows the beneficiary; watch property resold a few months later for a huge increase.

3) Maximize your (or your crony's) profit from investments: Hire money manager for "financial expertise" and let the manager select an investment broker; invest in volatile stocks and trade frequently to generate commissions; if you run up a large gain, don't selectively liquidate over time to pay the taxes but hold a "fire sale" to raise funds all in one day.

4) Undervalue beginning inventory: Have a used-furniture "friend" value a house full of antiques for $3,000; "forget" to put some of the more expensive items on the inventory; "forget" to include a $40,000 certificate of deposit.

5) Pay yourself first: Make payment of guardian and attorney fees the highest priority; disregard mortgage payments and let ward's home go into foreclosure; squirrel away money in the attorney's escrow account for possible future expenses.

6) Maintain guardianship at all costs: Keep family members uninformed; if family members try to become guardian, accuse them of stealing; use the ward's assets for legal fights to retain guardianship.

7) Improper financial reporting: Bury asset-management and brokerage fees as aggregate capital losses "due to market fluctuations"; don't classify disbursements separately; file incomplete or incorrect safe-deposit box inventories.

8) Forced incompetency: Visit assisted-living facilities and establish employee contacts; obtain voluntary limited financial guardianship; if there is money in the estate, do paperwork to force an evaluation of competency; get control over everything and the ward loses all rights.

9) Pay your attorney well: Let attorney bill full rate to shop for a computer and set it up for the ward; let attorneys bill their full rate, even if work is done by a paralegal or assistant.

10) Forget to file federal tax returns: Ensure there is a refund; wait till the ward dies; get check without oversight.

And, we'd like to add a few more of our own observations that we know has worked well by one group of guardians, attorneys, and judges in Cook County:

11) Target senior citizens and disabled young people so that you can attempt to take over guardianship. This can be done by following them home from doctor's appointments and forcing your way into the home to prepare a false assessement for the court; making false promises to the ward so he asks you to be his guardian; getting judges to allow for a removal of a power of attorney so you can access the money instead; accepting money in exchange for illegal changes of beneficiaries on wills, and get named guardian to fend off the rightful heirs; following court cases to watch for large legal settlements for disabled children and adults, then make up stories about the family so you can be named guardian and get the money; and colluding with colleagues who know of disabled people with large estates so you can hone in on the money.

12) Sell properties in closed real estate deals, wherein other interested parties have been disallowed an opportunity to bid on the property. Then you can buy it at half price, and flip it for a quick profit.

13) Tag-team approaches also work well---one guardianship company stalks the elderly and then petitions for temporary guardianship, the temporary guardina then shares an attorney with another guardianship company who will assume plenary guardianship; the plenary guadian then shares that same attorney with the bank, who then agrees not to look for missing money. Of course, the tag-team method can become a little complicated, and having a cooperative judge in the mix assures that the tag-team approach will be successful.

14) Deposit the estate into an OBRA Special Needs Pooled trust, and transfer the ward to one of your friends' public aid nursing homes. Then the estate can be used for the "administrative fees", instead of for care for the ward.

15) If any of these techniques fail, you must not be in with the right group of guardians, who have perfected this exploitation and theft of the wards' estates to a tee. Please contact us---we can tell you who has been successful in these methods.



Signed,

Your ProbateSharks Truthexposers