How to get our tragic story of elder financial exploitation and guardianship in the media, to help others dealing w/ Dementia /Alzheimers?

The list of these stories seems to be growing more and more.  Hopefully mine will also be published as well one of these days.  I have a few links to some articles and stories on similar horrible elder exploitation stories to mine listed here:

https://www.ktnv.com/news/contact-13/family-awarded-8-5-million-in-guardianship-abuse-case-says-it-s-not-about-the-money

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2018/04/attorney_indicted_on_charges_he_stole_19_million_f.html

http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/index.ssf/2017/07/heres_how_criminals_are_targeting_the_elderly.html

Toms River lawyer guilty of stealing $1.5M from dead clients, child

https://www.app.com/story/news/crime/jersey-mayhem/2018/01/10/toms-river-lawyer-guilty-stealing-1-5-m-dead-clients-child/1021893001/

AARP article : https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2018/family-fraud.html

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/who-is-stealing-grandmas-money/453360/

 NY Times article

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/your-money/financial-schemes-against-the-elderly-are-increasing.html

https://www.app.com/story/news/investigations/watchdog/2015/07/16/betrayal-trust-stealing-seniors/30241293/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/targeting-scams-against-the-elderly/2014/07/29/e104bfb2-175a-11e4-9e3b-7f2f110c6265_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1a63ba6c5e99

https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2018/family-fraud.html

I am going to provide a name for others to read about. It is what used to happen here in Las Vegas.
The name to look up and read about deals with how the elderly and their families were treated and scammed by professional guardians and the exact reason I filed for guardianship of my wife.
Look up "April Parks","April Parks in Las Vegas."
The story is sickening and was repeated so many times in Nevada/Las Vegas.
Laws have since been changed and the new judge is very good at protecting the person needing care and appointing family members to be the caregiver.
Our Certified Eldercare Attorney was very helpful and informative.
A lot of what happened here is happening across the country. Fortunately some are taking notice and starting to make changes to help us and our families.

I guess you don't need our help; you seem to have it all figured out. Be well.

https://www.app.com/story/news/investigations/watchdog/investigations/2015/06/27/guardianship-abuse-incapacity-trial/71006830/

On a small positive note, we quickly found out that our close friends were behind us, and our University board that we sat on for years (who was also strangely named in the vicious untrue article for no apparent reason except to harm) stood by us throughout this and we will never forget that. Many people who did not know us posted death threats and horrible things about us in the comments section under the article when it went online. We eventually sold the beautiful home that we built in 2007, with such high hopes of love and family, but primarily so my mother could live comfortably with us - at a 40% loss and moved away from the town we had lived in for 20 years. My husband found a new position where he is valued and respected after months of being unemployed and now finally I can tell my story, as it should be told. I just have to find a newspaper or magazine or other form of media that will tell it. Any suggestions are always appreciated.

To clarify, the first unethical lawyer’s friend (another lawyer) became her guardian in 2016 mainly because they went before a judge without my family knowing.  It cost my family over $120k in legal fees of our own personal finances to try and get guardianship and get the defamatory article retracted. My husband lost his job (he has an impeccable reputation in the industry) for the first time in his career and no one in our family ever saw my mother in the three years before her death. We weren’t even notified of her death by the nursing home either. Just the kind funeral director called us, because I had reached out to him and because I was next of kin. We had to prevent the slimy lawyers from attending her funeral too !! In this case, there were no other siblings or family looking to get at her money, which was given to me anyway over many years before. The corrupt nursing home and two unethical attorneys basically stole all her jewelry (which I was forced to turn over) and about 40% of her estate was completely lost. Not to mention the immense psychological pain that it caused to my family. The combination of dementia and BiPolar diagnosis all created the perfect storm for greedy unethical attorneys with no heart to isolate an elderly sick woman and almost destroy our family. It’s amazing we got through it and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. My mother was denied seeing her three amazing grandchildren graduate and celebrate their accomplishments. We made it through miraculously but this was definitely a case of “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” for our family. We tried every possible recourse to save my mother from these terrible people. The NJ Law Ethics Committee (lawyers covering for other lawyers), the NJ Ombudsman’s Office (they can only help victims when they are alive and will not get involved or testify with trials), the NJ Attorney General’s Office (not enough clear cut evidence, even though they stole over $400k of her assets and all her Italian gold jewelry) and the NJ Medicaid Fraud Unit (which also looks into Elder exploitation) and nothing could be done to help. The lawyers still happily practice in NJ and since there are no formal complaints lodged against them, they will probably take advantage of countless older people in time. The rogue judge retired and the nursing home was sold because one of the founders was permanently dis-barred from practicing law in NJ, due to fraud and cooking the books. We could sue the lawyers but we haven’t been able to find a lawyer that would take our case on contingency so I won’t spend more of our hard-earned money to pay more lawyers. I am in the process of finding a newspaper or organization who would publish our story in a magazine or newspaper but no luck yet. I’m sure those terrible lawyers will try to sue us just to protect their “reputations”. My mother was who lost out - dying all alone after falling out of her bed with no guard rails. Terrible for us to dwell on now.  Now finally after five long years of suffering and living through that horror, we can begin to move forward. I could not have gotten through it without the love and support of my husband of 36 years and my three children. But in the middle of the horror, when the spiteful article hit the news and my husband was escorted out of his job and the very next day, all our bank accounts went down to $0 (leaving one of my kids with a joint checking account with me without any access to money while on a Navy ship in the Middle East) due to the wrongful judgement imposed on me, that was later released. It was unbearable. We endured shallow neighbors whispering and pointing at us and saying “how could someone steal money from their own mother ?” Our close friends would always say to us how we never deserved this after the 30+ years of sacrifice and everyday care we gave my mother.

John Leland at the NY Times had a story this weekend on guardianship. Not so much about fraud as the difficulty of the guardianship system in dealing with a mentally ill elder.

Ship, you say that the NH introduced your mother to a "local slimy lawyer"?

Was that person actually your mother's guardian ad litem?

When a family brings court proceedings to obtain guardianship over an elder and declare them incompetent, a temporary guardian is appointed by the courts to look out of the elder's best interests, as sometimes it is the family that is "slimy".

I'm sorry for your loss. But it will help you tell your story if you understand the guardianship process.

You say that the NH suggested that the family sue for guardianship. Was there disagreement within the family on this point?

The story begins in 2012, when my 88 year old mother, who was living with us in our home for years, was taken to the hospital by ambulance due to what she said was a stroke and they could not find what was physically wrong with her. She told a psychiatrist there who was called in that she was going to kill herself and burn our house down and after saying this to a few hospital staff members, they committed her to a geriatric psychiatric hospital for observation. She was there for 6 weeks and they diagnosed her as BiPolar 1 and Dementia and recommended a memory care facility. She refused all the places we frantically searched for and finally I found a nice place that she agreed to where they would allow her sewing machine (sewing was the only thing that relaxed her) and it seemed clean and bright and new. I had to take a few weeks off from work to search all over New Jersey for a place for her because my husband and I were completely unfamiliar with private pay facilities, or Veteran Aid and Attendance, etc. She of course never gave me POA but we always had joint accounts after my father died because she had no idea of how to handle paperwork due to her language difference. The end result was that the facility we chose - Paragon Village told us to not visit for a few weeks until she settled in as they could not keep someone who may try to run or wander. We obliged because we didn’t know and they told us we needed to get legal guardianship, which we started. Instead the facility put her in touch on her second day there with an unethical Italian lawyer across the street who systematically cut the family off from her while convincing her he would not charge her any fees to fight the guardianship. He did in fact charge her over $80k but since she had dementia, she had no idea. The nursing home doubled the rate of her room we contracted with them, without us even knowing during that first month. He even took her to his house for Thanksgiving two weeks after she had fallen at the nursing home and broken her hip and shoulder. It was complete brainwashing of a sick elderly woman. The guardianship trial was a year later and the slimy attorney won her case. She was deemed competent by a rogue judge and his lawyer friend was appointed her conservator. I was forced to turn over the money she GAVE me for living in our house and all savings bond gifts with my name on them over a 30 year period to her lawyer. They turned her completely against our family and we never saw her again. Her last words in the courtroom were “I never agreed with your children being in the military, so I hope all three die in battle”. My three kids are all officers in the military and attended federal service academies so this was just devastating to hear such a terrible wish/curse. She also said that her lawyer was her new family and he promised he would destroy my family. And that he almost did. Because he had a local reporter he was friendly with write a defamatory completely untrue article in the local paper that we “faked Alzheimer’s” and noted our current and former employers names and various Advisory Boards we sat on. My husband was a VP in the pharmaceutical industry and was fired the next day after the article went viral, even though he was not AT ALL involved with the guardianship. Her attorney carried through her earlier threat of public embarrassment. Our close friends were in shock because they knew of ALL the years of care and sacrifice we made to accommodate my mother. We had no idea that these were traits and side effects of the dementia. Fast forward to three years later of being isolated from the family and my mother went from 130 pounds to 70 pounds, had numerous unnecessary surgeries (all conveniently covered by Medicare and Blue Cross) and ultimately died all alone, falling out of her hospital bed without rails that her new guardian had not made sure she was being cared for properly.