This Story of Elder Financial Abuse Reveals Warning Signs that Get Overlooked

Charles Wallace talks about uncovering the story of elder financial abuse that happened to his mother.

Not all elder financial abuse stories start with a scam, or even an obvious problem. A friendly face and small decisions can spiral into something much more sinister. And if you don’t know what to look for, it’s easy to overlook the warning signs and let a predator take everything from vulnerable people.

See Elder Exploitation with Charles Wallace for a complete transcript of the Easy Prey podcast episode.

Charles “Chip” Wallace has an IT background, starting as an app developer before moving into project management in the tech, banking, and finance industries. After his mother’s death, Chip reconstructed over 3,000 transactions to expose how a caregiver stole over $1 million. The story he uncovered also showed banks, attorneys, and financial professionals missing the warning signs and failing to act. He shared the events he reconstructed in his book The Caregiver’s Game.

A Story of Elder Financial Abuse

Chip lived 700 miles away from his mother; his sister lived even further away. In 2017, the broker his mother had worked with for over three decades mentioned to him that she was starting to get a little slow with numbers. The next time he visited, in late 2017, he also noticed she wasn’t eating very well. So he suggested she hire someone to help her cook.

In 2018, she called Chip and told him that she had a new friend who was cooking for her. When he visited her again about a month later, he noticed the fridge was full of food. His mother had always been a small woman – there was no way she would ask for that much food. The caregiver refused to provide receipts, saying she worked for Chip’s mother, not him. When he left, he knew she was probably going to keep overspending on food. But he never imagined how far the elder financial abuse would go.

This caregiver wasn’t actually someone his mother had hired, or a friend who became a caregiver. His mother lived in a high-rise condo. She met this woman while walking around the building. Chip figured the woman had been stalking the building looking for her next victim. She spotted his mother shuffling around and struck up a conversation, and his mother mentioned that she could use someone to help her cook. The caregiver started by helping her with food. After a few months, she started spending the night in the spare bedroom because Chip’s mother wanted company. It escalated from there.

Diagnosis and Escalation

In late 2018, Chip’ mother finally had a neurologist appointment. Chip visited to take her, and she wanted the caregiver to come with her. He didn’t think anything of it. He and the caregiver were both in the room while she went through the tests. She didn’t do very well on them. For the follow-up visit, the caretaker took her, and both of them said that she’d improved. It wasn’t until a few months later that he learned the improvement was only a one-point gain, from 16 to 17 out of 30, which still put her at moderate dementia. He wasn’t familiar enough with the tests to know what to ask.

In the summer of 2019, Chip’s sister went to visit their mother and saw that she wasn’t doing so well. His sister suggested getting a capacity letter from the neurologist. So at the end of July, the neurologist wrote a letter detailing their mother’s diminished capacity, and Chip and his sister gave that letter to their mother’s broker and the CPA who handled her finances.

Chip was planning to go visit her in March of 2020, but then everything shut down because of covid. Chip and his sister had both been kicked off of her power of attorney – it turned out the caregiver had gotten a friend who was a doctor to write a note saying she was of sound mind, and her attorney trusted that over the letter from the neurologist. Their mother had said to stop telling them things, so they stopped hearing anything. When they called, she only talked for a few minutes – always on speaker, with the caregiver prompting her. There wasn’t much either of them could do at that point, even though they suspected something was going on, because they didn’t have any information.

Uncovering the Elder Financial Abuse

Chip wasn’t able to visit his mother again until January 2022, just a few months before she died. It wasn’t until she passed away that Chip started to uncover the extent of the damage. His mother had redone her will in January of 2020. She had also bought an annuity with the caregiver as the beneficiary. All told, the caregiver stood to get about $500,000 out of Chip’s mother’s death.

Chip’s attorney told him how he could potentially block the annuity, so he made that phone call in June 2022. A few weeks after, he found out that she had died in a hospital north of where his mother had lived, about an hour away from her home. There was never an obituary, and there were no relatives listed on her death certificate.

In the meantime, he’d started doing research on this woman. He discovered that the caregiver had done some extremely similar elder financial abuse to a man about ten years before. He found the man’s obituary, and she’d obviously written it because it talked about the two years they’d spent together and nothing about the rest of his life. She’d gotten his house and his brokerage account.

After the caregiver died, Chip was able to get access to her emails. He found out that she’d been fired by an agency for inappropriate use of client information, but just started working for him directly. She convinced the man’s attorney to give her access to his finances and power of attorney. In 2011, she married the guy, and he died four months later. After a few years, she sold the man’s house and went looking for her next victim. That’s when she found Chip’s mother.

The End of the Story

The caregiver died before Chip put together the whole story. But even her death left a trail of questionable details. From her emails, Chip knows that that she bought a house in a remote area about an hour south of her home. On January 1, 2022, she used a U-Haul to empty Chip’s mother’s storage units. She put 460 miles on the U-Haul over a few days and left it just north of that remote house.

When Chip managed to get the annuity stopped in June 2022, she emailed his mother’s will and death certificate to another email address. Chip never saw that email address anywhere else in her account, but it included both the caregiver’s initials and her boyfriend’s initials. Seven days after that email, she supposedly dies. But a month later, there’s another email sent from her email to that other email address that also sent the caregiver’s will. And once the caregiver’s estate was through probate, her executor went and formally purchased that remote house. There’s no proof of anything, but it left Chip wondering.

The other victim’s obituary means this was some kind of pattern. It wasn’t just a one-time incident – or even just one individual. It seems like other people in the caregiver’s life, like her two grown daughters, were involved. They all have criminal records, and Chip had to have his attorney to tell the caregiver’s daughters to stop using his mother’s CVS rewards over a year after she died.

There are lots of reports that elder financial abuse increased during covid. But most people don’t say anything and don’t know what happened. Chip wants to share this story because the caregiver’s daughters are running similar scams. And when he put together the story, he hadn’t seen anyone talking about a scam like this.

How Much She Stole

It’s difficult to estimate how much this caregiver managed to steal from Chip’s mother through elder financial abuse. But it was a lot. The will and annuity was only part of it.

It's hard to know exactly how much Chip's mother lost to elder financial abuse by her caregiver.

In early 2019, the caregiver had been with Chip’s mother for a year and a half. She was able to convince his mother’s CPA that she should be paid for her services. An in-home care company quoted that they would bill $30 per hour for 24-hour care, and the caregiver successfully argued that she should get the same. Over three years, she grossed close to $300,000 per year, because she was billing 24 hours a day. She didn’t have any credentials. And the person running that company was also paying taxes and dealing with overhead, while the caregiver was not doing any of that.

On top of that, the caregiver also got access to Chip’s mother’s credit cards. She started spending a lot. Most of it was at places like Target and discount stores, but she would spend several hundred dollars at a time.

There also isn’t any real way to know how much she stole that wasn’t money. Shortly before Chip’s mother died, the caregiver rented a U-Haul and cleaned out his mother’s storage units. The CPA was aware of that, and she said that she donated everything to a charity. Chip thinks she did that to hide that she stole some of the more valuable items. It’s hard to spot that a particular item has been stolen when everything is gone.

The Red Flags Everyone Missed

Looking back on this story and what he uncovered, Chip can identify a lot of red flags of elder financial abuse that nobody picked up on. Some of them were more challenging to spot. But some of them were warning signs that people or institutions definitely should have spotted.

Visiting her more often might have helped, but it was difficult. Chip worked full-time, and with the distance, it was hard to find the time. His mother could also be challenging to be around sometimes, so visiting her wasn’t always encouraged. Chip and his sister both assumed that the broker and CPA would watch out for her and not let anything happen. He also didn’t know the difference between signs of dementia and normal signs of aging. If he had known about his mother’s decline earlier, he could have potentially put more protections in place before the caregiver entered her life.

Now, Chip knows that the fact his mother called the caregiver a “new friend” and not a caregiver or someone helping her was a warning sign. So was the fact she wanted her to come to the neurologist appointment. Both of those pointed towards an emotional connection to this woman that went beyond the bounds of liking someone she’d hired and had a lot of potential for abuse. He’d also noticed early on that the caregiver seemed to overspend on food. But he didn’t think much of it at the time. He didn’t realize that was a manifestation of a problem that would eventually steal so much.

Signs the Bank Should Have Noticed

Before the caregiver started using Chip’s mother’s credit cards, she’d watched the statements come in and noticed the spending level. She didn’t start using the cards until a few months after the first neurology appointment, and she kept the amount to the same level. But Chip’s mother had two credit cards, one of which hadn’t been used in about eight years. The caregiver used both at about the same level.

This should have been a warning sign in a lot of ways. The change in spending habits should have said something to the bank. Chip found out later that they started sending more declines, but when one card declined, the caregiver would just use another one. Chip’s mother had had only a handful of declines over her entire life, mostly because of traveling. Now it was happening a few dozen times a month. The bank should have realized something was up.

Where the caregiver shopped changed, too. She started by spending just in Chip’s mother’s neighborhood, then spread out. At one point, Chip plotted it on a map, and the spending was just spreading across the counter from a central point. An elderly woman doesn’t shop like that. And the bank had twenty years of data on his mother as a customer. Even if they didn’t immediately know it was elder financial abuse, somebody should have realized something strange was going on.

Signs the CPA Missed

Chip didn’t get access to his mother’s credit card statements until late 2022. But even looking at them, there was an obvious change in spending habits. His mother liked to shop at places like Nordstrom and Nieman’s. The caregiver preferred places like Target, Tuesday Morning, and discount stores. And she was spending $500 at a time at these stores and doing it about every ten days.

If the CPA had been looking closely at the credit card statements, he would have noticed something had changed. Chip assumed that when the statements came across his desk, he just took a brief look at them. When he saw that it was a card that did belong to Chip’s mother and the amount was about what she usually spent each month, he didn’t look any closer. That’s probably also why he didn’t notice that both of her cards were suddenly spending that amount instead of just the one she usually used. If the statements landed on his desk on different days, he was probably just thinking that this is the usual amount for her credit card bill, not recalling that he’d already received a similar bill this month.

The caregiver was grooming Chip’s mother into saying the right things. She was still fairly socially alert and could handle conversations for a short time. Yes or no answers were also fairly easy. Since the CPA didn’t interact with her much, it was probably pretty easy for the caretaker to convince him she was still in sound mind. But the CPA did have the letter from the neurologist talking about her diminished mental capacity. That letter should have made him more alert for elder financial abuse and made him look closer at some of these details.

The Importance of Monitoring Transactions

The fact that the bank had all of these signs that something was going on and didn’t do anything still blows Chip’s mind. He’s had conversations with them, and they don’t have a good answer for how they monitor transactions. They know that if someone’s trying to wire $10,000 to Nigeria, that’s a red flag. But they’re apparently not monitoring the spending patterns that would let them spot things like elder financial abuse. Especially because this situation was such an extreme pattern change, it should have stood out.

Especially with all the AI tools available now, there should be some way for these bank systems to flag that something strange or unusual is happening. On an individual level, there are tools online that can give you that insight. But you have to get the cardholder to agree early on. Some of these systems advertise themselves as a way to check if your credit is involved in identity theft, which is a good way to get that initial buy-in. It’s a very neat tool, you just have to get the person to agree.

The challenge is that the people who get in the most trouble are the ones who are still pretty self-reliant. Chip’s mother still lived independently. And he’s heard stories from other people whose fathers married their caregivers for the same reason – they thought they were in control, and it was fine until it wasn’t.

The ones that get in the most trouble, as far as the older person, is the one that’s pretty self-reliant and still thinks they’re in control.
Charles Wallace

Tips to Avoid Elder Financial Abuse

The biggest challenge for avoiding elder financial abuse as you or your parents age is finding someone you can rely on. Whether it’s your kids, another relative, someone at your bank, or an attorney, you need someone you can give access to. Even if it’s at a view-only level, getting someone to help monitor your accounts is essential.

When hiring a caregiver, make sure they’re licensed. And it’s always safer to go through an agency. You can still have issues with agency-based caregivers, but it’s still much safer than just someone who knocked on your door. If someone knocks on your door offering to do caregiver work, that is a major warning sign.

If you’re hiring a caregiver for an aging parent, make sure you’re the one hiring. You want the power to hire, fire, and set down ground rules. Make sure they give you receipts. Let them know that you’ll have cameras and may come to visit at random times. If they need to make purchases, give them a prepaid card with a set amount, not unlimited access. Put valuable things that would be easy to steal, like jewelry, in a safe or remove them from the home. That way you can keep track of what’s going out the door. You don’t necessarily have to be super invasive, but Chip likes the idea of scaring them into thinking you’re going to be invasive. If they’re uncomfortable with it, you should probably find someone else.

I like the idea of basically scaring the caregiver that you’re going to be invasive. And if you’ve got someone who’s nervous about that, then they’re probably the wrong one.
Charles Wallace

Learn more about Charles Wallace’s experience and his book The Caregiver’s Game at thecaregiversgame.com. You can get the book on Amazon.