The 89-year-old woman had dementia and lived in a Northfield nursing home. Her daughter, who was her legal guardian, needed a lot of money. So she stole $1.1 million she was holding in trust by selling her mother’s land, according to Attorney General Lori Swanson, whose office filed charges against Connie Ruth Rott, 56, of Lakeville, my colleague Warren Wolfe reports. Rott used the money for the legal defense of her son, who was charged with manufacturing methamphetamine, as well as snow plowing and other expenses. The Rott case is a similar scenario that investigators say happened to Anna Sitte, the Alzheimer’s patient whose son was accused of forging his mother’s name on checks and liquidating the family farm in North Dakota. That story was reported by my colleague Paul Levy last month after another of Anna Sitte’s sons, Jimmy, contacted Whistleblower.

I’m hearing these stories over and over again from Whistleblower readers. Many have accused greedy family members of exploiting vulnerable elders by getting themselves appointed guardians and conservators in probate court. It’s truly the crime of our time. With people losing their jobs, their investments tanking and debts growing, retired folks who have accumulated assets over a lifetime are increasingly the targets of the desperate.

Earlier this week, at a state Senate hearing, a bill to beef up the state’s vulnerable adult statute featured testimony from Phil Carruthers, prosecution division director of the Ramsey County Attorney’s office. The office established an elder abuse unit on Jan. 1. “Most of the alleged perpetrators are adult family members,” Carruthers told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It’s a crime of isolation and control.”

Senate bill 758 makes a number of changes to strengthen the investigation and punishment of crimes against vulnerable adults, including broadening the definition of financial exploitation to “specifically address using or managing the property or resources of a vulnerable adult for the benefit of someone other than the vulnerable adult, and depriving a vulnerable adult of their property or resources,” according to Senate Counsel, Research and Fiscal Analysis report. The bill also seeks to give investigators more access to records of financial institutions to root out these crimes, as well as creating a “civil cause of action for financial exploitation” that would give vulnerable adult victims more power to sue those who exploited them.

Carruthers said the cases his office has prosecuted lately have involved amounts of $100,000 or more. “We believe that this bill will do a number of things that will help us enormously,” he said.

Whistleblower will let you know what happens to this bill. You can track it yourself by going to the Legislature’s web site and typing in the bill number (758) under the Senate bill search.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Seniors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.