License to Steal:Elder Abuse and Corruption in the APS (Adult Protective Services)

This is a true account of my experience with “Elder Abuse” and the corruption instilled deeply in the current system. I still have all the evidence and photos just waiting for somebody to actually give a damn. Not going to hold my breath after waging this battle.

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Disclaimer: This is really important for people to understand, even when following the proper channels such as law enforcement, elected officials, APS, financial institutions, lawyers, courts, medical professionals, it is not a guarantee justice will be served. Names were changed or not mentioned in an attempt to protect any innocents involved which are few in this case.

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It all began when my Uncle passed away. Paul was a secretive man, I actually knew very little about him, although his daughter (my 1st cousin) was like a little sister to me when we were growing up. She was her Daddy’s girl and whatever Bonnie wanted she got. New clothes, private lessons, cars, good schools. Everything came easy for her because her Dad was a very successful man and he was smart enough to grow his business to several surrounding towns.

It wasn’t always that way for him. He was adopted at 2 and was kind of a misfit. He got his first job right after high school changing truck tires, his boss recognized immediately how hard he worked, it wasn’t long before he was elevated to manager after learning the ins and outs of the truck tire business.

Apparently, he was pretty damned good at it, within a couple of years he was offered a store of his own. As the years passed he had 4 truck tire centers and retired before he turned 55. Suffice it to say my uncle was a workaholic. Many people appreciated his business savvy. He served his clientele with respect and he didn’t do it all alone. My Aunt did most of the bookkeeping, traveling with him when he went to check on things at one of his stores.

My uncle won salesman of the year on numerous occasions and was privileged to visit China, Mexico, the Caribbean all paid for by the consortium. He also was invited to join a variety of men’s business clubs. He secretive about his business but was generous to his family, church and the community.

What most people didn’t know is he had taught himself the stock market making some extremely profitable trades. He was a visionary of what was to come as far as technology, he made several million dollars with his talent for investing in the stock market.

My Aunt had no idea until after he passed away that she had just become a multi-millionaire. We didn’t have many of those in our family. LOL!

It shouldn’t have surprised her, but she was not exactly in her right mind when he died. Uncle P had taken care of all the financial decisions and she got his monthly salary to run the household.

Aunt Glenda had a sever nervous breakdown about 2 years prior to my Uncles death. She has never been the same person. My Uncle was one of the most severe alcoholics I’d ever encountered. After several trips to the doctor to have fluid drained off from his belly from his failing liver, his blood turned septic, he was gone by July 2008. What a painful death he suffered, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. My Aunt never really accepted that he wasn’t going to make it and that he’d eventually come back home like he always had in the past.

I was unable to attend the funeral or be there for my younger cousin and my Aunt. I was my juggling my own set of circumstances with my own mother who had a chronic disease requiring mist of my spare time. I knew what was coming long before my Aunt. She was distraught with so many ghosts of her own, suffering from a mental breakdown that lead to her own hospitalization and multiple rounds of electro shock therapy. She had been released from the hospital prior to my Uncles death however, she was definitely not at the top of her game.

After the will was read a few weeks later, it was revealed that my Aunt inherited close to 13 million dollars. As I stated earlier she was not exactly grounded in good sense and immediately told everyone who’d listen that she was rich. Predators came calling at all hours with their hands outstretched for money and loans. Being a church going person she was generous to those that flocked to her in sympathy filling his death and they had no intention of ever repaying her.

My cousin tried to warn her, as did I, but unfortunately my Aunt would hear none of it. She suddenly had her way not having to answer to her husband or anyone else. Going out to lunch every day, driving the car of her choice, and spending big dollars shopping.

It was getting out of hand and spinning out of control. Someone, possibly a long time friend having my Aunt’s best intentions in mind was appointed by the court to be her guardian ad litem. To my knowledge her friend and previous golf buddy was doing a good job. That was until she was threatened by someone and ultimately decided my Aunt wasn’t worth it the risk. This friend hinted at trouble with a specific predator coming out in force trying to get her power of attorney and her money.

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Truthfully, my Aunt has been a real pain in the ass since her break with reality back in 2008. She is my favorite aunt and we were close most of my life. Here I was in Florida with my own dilemma, my chronically ill mother- her sister and my profession.

A couple of weeks later out of the blue, a man who had once worked for my uncle in one of his stores shows up and suddenly becomes her whole existence. A middle aged man, tall, dark and good looking who claimed to be a private investigator. He told her he had worked with the police on many cases, which was all she needed to turn over the keys to both her heart and her wallet.

Before long Gerald (as I will call him) had convinced her that he should be her power of attorney. Her married daughter was too irresponsible to handle her care. That was a lie! She convinced herself she was in love with this guy even though she knew he was married with 2 sons. She was like a teenager, calling him every time she needed something which was about ten times a day. When he tired of the calls it was handled by his equally guilty predator wife Neena.

I have to interject at this point that at no time was giving POA to my cousin or myself even considered. This point must be stressed, it seems to be a generational idea that males know more about handling difficult financial decisions then do women. My cousin and myself were far more qualified to hold POA, we are her family and have been there loving her our entire lives. My own mother was exasperated with her sisters decisions and behaviors!

This entire charade was a complete fallacy, so I began to do a little investigative work of my own. The information I found out about this guy wasn’t encouraging, in fact the previous couple he and his wife had “taken care of” were both dead. I began to get alarmed. Bonnie and I began to try to figure out what to do about Gerald and his opportunistic family. My cousin was just beside herself going through a divorce after 18 years of marriage, so this was one more straw on the camels back making it so much more difficult to put the all the pieces together.

I flew out to Texas twice during the fall of 2012, my own mother had passed away unexpectedly in 2010, my mission was to gather information and consult with an Elder Law attorney in Dallas.

We both reported Gerald to APS, better known as Adult Protective Services, they sent out a couple of women who knew things were off but didn’t speak up. Bonnie even contacted the attorney who had written my late Uncle’s will. Roland had know her since she was a young child. Nope he wasn’t willing to help us either.

Every which way we turned, someone had already scammed off the top of my Uncles hard earned money or had their fingers fully in the pie. Even his stockbroker suddenly became very wealthy and sold stock that he was directed never to sell. My Aunt could have easily lived off just the dividends and interest from his my Uncles investment accounts until her death.

After much deliberation we had our lawyer demand a competency test be performed on my Aunt by someone other than the person Gerald had chosen to oversee her care. Then the next step was to set a date for the case in court in Abilene Texas.

When I arrived in San Antonio my cousin picked me up at the airport and we drove straight to Dallas to the lawyers office. We discussed his strategy and gave him the all facts we had gathered. He seemed capable and knowledgeable, but in the court room, he became quite a different person. He never asked my cousin or I any questions, no witnesses were questioned. The court was fully packed with APS workers and Geralds friends (oddly enough he nor his wife were present). When it came to the competency test the judge didn’t even bother to question the doctor. My aunts financial records were also sealed by the Judge. It was if he had been paid off by the opposing team.

Lots of time and money wasted, but we weren’t finished yet. I was already out $5,000. Off we went to see my Uncles long time Attorney, who once again refused to tell us anything saying to it was a conflict of interest even though my Uncle was deceased and his estate settled.

After my return from to Florida from Texas, I just refused to talk to anyone for several weeks. My own health was at risk worrying about this unresolved situation and for the first time in my life it occurred to me that perhaps it was becoming too difficult to remain objective about my Aunt.

Please understand, my Aunt today is more like a demanding child who is unable to claim any independence whatsoever. She’s become very narcissistic, talking incessantly about herself, truly incapable of carrying on even a short conversation with others. She no longer drives or leaves the house unescorted. I hardly recognized her at that point, she was overweight, diabetic and not the same person I’d know my entire life.

Stunned that the courts were so uncooperative, we wrote to the Texas Rangers asking for their assistance. They were nice enough to return communication, but even after explanation of the offense they refused to get involved as long as Bonnie or myself did not have an official power of attorney. I wrote to Greg Abbott who was the Attorney General of Texas at the time. Same answer. No one was willing to listen or go out on a limb for us. We filed complaints to any agency we thought could assist us.

It was a horrible situation-we had both tried so hard to do the right thing. It seemed like the world was against us and at some point my cousin and I even had a spat so I jumped on a plane and flew home. My head was pounding my heart was breaking, and if Gerald had his way my Aunt would be living on the street penniless. He had isolated her from us (her family) and all her old friends. She had even paid for the home Gerald and his family lived in on substantial acreage just outside the city limits. In fact they had already used her credit card to purchase an $85,000 Coachman RV that they drove to Florida to visit my mom. It now sits on his property on a lake in Texas.

In 2009 they dropped my Aunt off to see my Mother and drove on south to enjoy their Disney vacation in my Aunt’s new coachman bus. A week later they returned, loaded up my Aunt and headed back to Texas. Such nice criminals, driving the old woman to visit her Sister while they used her credit cards at Disney, Epcot and God knows where else.

Finally at our witts end we decided to hire a private investigator to see what she could uncover about Gerald. I doubt she ever left her office even though she made many promises and no reconnaissance work was preformed done as we had requested. Being pretty good at researching, I found she had little more to tell us than what we already knew. So there went another $1500 for nothing.

It is close to ten years ago this saga began. Since that time my Aunt has suffered neglect, both physical and verbal abuse by her captors. Unexplained bruising, broken bones, a cracked skull and still she is in his care. Her health is in decline as she has developed severe sugar diabetes. No longer allowed to drive, she is a prisoner in her own home. The heat and air conditioning work only occasionally. The slab of her ranch style house is cracked and water seeps through the crack in the bathroom. Roof needs repair and she pays Gerald $60,000 a year and his new hateful girlfriend $30,000 to drive her around! She doesn’t bathe often and for 9 months she has had an open bed sore on her lower back that has not been attended to properly. I know this to be true because I was just there in her home for a week during Thanksgiving 2017. It is a disaster, so much missing.

Gerald picks her all her Doctors and when shes been good he drops her off at her favorite grocery store, which also has a coffee bar. Sometimes he won’t come back for several hours. She gets an allowance of $50.00 per week, which is very generous considering it is her own money!

Meanwhile, all of Gerald’s ilk have been given brand new trucks, new clothes,spending money and places of their own to live in. His first wife who was initially involved in this scam divorced him, because according to her she could not participate in the deceit any longer. What I would give to sit down with her for just an hour to hear what she had to say about all of this mess. She won’t talk btw.

In conclusion: the System is Rigged!

All the years of crooked APS investigations, lawyers, police, wellness checks, pleading with public officials, FINRA complaints etc. I am just worn out with trying to do the right thing, so is my Cousin Bonnie. The pressure was just too much and the deck too stacked. It’s hard to give up on a person you still care for and love so much. I can’t say we didn’t try to make her life better, because we certainly did, she chose him over us.

There is such a huge paper trail in my aunts case, it could have been followed, the corruption and deceitful behavior was so oblivious. Doctors flat out lied on paper, APS covered it up, the cops assumed too much. Financial institutions knew, but did absolutely nothing.

Laws to protect the elderly from abuse need to be strictly enforced and throughly investigated. There are so many of us left helpless and feeling lost from these crimes.

So many people along the way could have helped us, but in this world older people are apparently of little value. Unless of course they are donating to someones personal financial cause. Just for the record I have never in my life asked for a dime from my Aunt. I just wanted her to live out her life comfortably and normally because I do love her. Gerald hung the moon in her eyes and she defends him, it’s obvious she’s been coerced and her mind controlled with conditioned responses.

My uncle is rolling in his grave seeing how his family was pillaged, especially his daughter whom he adored. All this because a vile man he fired for theft back in the 1980s crept back out from under a rock 10 years ago to exact his revenge.

Maybe we weren’t meant to give up our own lives to fight for one broken old woman. Maybe if we had been her son or her nephew she would have listened.

Maybe there is no justice in this world.