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Being Present
The Caregiver’s Game is a gripping memoir and investigative true story surrounding your mother’s dementia and manipulation by caretakers that exposes the hidden realities of elder financial abuse. What first made you realize something was wrong with your mother’s situation?
The first sign I wasn’t aware of. When my mother told my sister she had a “new friend.” I blew it off. However, that seems to be a very common remark made at the beginning of these situations. I went to visit about 4 weeks after that remark. My mother’s refrigerator was stuffed. I knew that was wrong, but not living in town I couldn’t do anything about it. I just assumed the caregiver was just over-buying. I looked at my mother to ask for receipts but she said nothing. I figured, how bad could it be? That was March 2018. I visited again in Sept 2018. Nothing seemed different from my last visit.
My sister visited in Jun 2019 and told me mother was not doing well, but was acting in denial. We pushed for a doctor’s capacity determination. When that was delivered and showed my mother did not have the capacity for financial decisions, we figured that would cover any issues. Then, 10 days later, we were removed from the Medical POA. That’s when we suspected a bigger issue, but again, never thinking it was going to be this bad.
How did you begin reconstructing the financial trail?
I started about 3 weeks after my mother passed away. We found out about the new will and the annuity for the caregiver a week after her death. I was in shock. These things happen to other people, not us. Then I got mad.
I started trying to log into her broker account. I had the password previously. That had been changed, but I knew the security questions and had her old phone, which had her email account. This allowed me to fetch the bank code to set up a new password.
Once into the account, I started reconstructing the statements and pulling check copies. I wanted to see how much the caregiver was really getting paid. I also wanted to see if there were any patterns or locations that were different from where my mother would normally visit. I used a couple of reporting tools to visualize and map the shopping habits.
Next, I pulled her credit report from the Lifelock app on her phone. That’s when I saw the new department store credit card. I asked the CPA about it, and he knew nothing of it.
What are the most common warning signs families miss, and what is the single most important preventive step families can take?
I mentioned above. The person tells their family they have a new friend. Others are seeing the caregiver answering for the patient or not being able to get a hold of the person.
The most important preventive is being present in the home on a regular basis. This is what the neighbor’s daughter did. She was there every day at different times. She even set up cameras around the condo to monitor. This constant monitoring drove the caregiver to find another victim in the building.
What would you change about elder protection systems?
The process of obtaining a Guardianship needs to be reviewed. Each county can have a different experience. The one my mother was living in was known for not agreeing to them. Others nearby were easier.
The challenge is that once you are granted a Guardianship, you can make the relative very mad, and they will then remove you from the will or estate.
It was suggested to me by a probate attorney that if you see this situation going on, do not attempt a Guardianship, but just wait until they pass and address it then.
There should be a resource like FINRA.org that monitors the financial industry workers, like brokers. A centralized place to report caregivers for incidents like being removed from the caregiving agency for bad behavior. Background checks only scratch the surface, depending on what your request.
The other challenge is that most of the reporting is done by front-line workers or those within the Adult Protective Services. These resources are only as good as they are trained or the tools available to them.
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The credit card charges didn’t make sense. Groceries seven times the national average for a woman who never topped 105 pounds. Hundreds at Sam’s Club five days before she died while she was housebound in assisted living, barely eating, her apartment nearly empty. The caregiver had an answer for everything. So did the lawyer. So did the bank.
Then the caregiver died. Or disappeared.
The body was the wrong weight. Seventy pounds too heavy at cremation. No obituary. No funeral. No daughters on the death certificate. A death at a hospital an hour from home, one she’d visited months earlier, driving past three closer ones to get there.
Eight days earlier, Charles Wallace had blocked a $250,000 annuity payout, the last big payday from his mother’s estate.
It started simply enough. A caregiver knocked on Joell Fleming’s door with bagels and a smile. The 78-year-old widow — sharp-tongued, fiercely independent, survivor of five marriages, let a predator inside.
Esmarelda Gomez sat in the room when the neurologist scored Joell 16 out of 30 on cognitive testing. She watched the diagnosis happen. Then the spending exploded. Within three years, nearly $1 million was gone. Children removed from medical power of attorney. A new will naming the caregiver for a six-figure annuity. Credit cards used at the caregiver’s home address twenty-five miles away the last charge the day after Joell died.
Doctors, lawyers, banks, and Adult Protective Services all missed it.
From 700 miles away, Charles Wallace spent five years pulling a decade of credit card records and building the forensic case the professionals never did. Cards that went from two declines in seven years to a 59% decline rate. Two cards cycled at the register within seconds of each other. A dual food supply prepared meals for his mother, bulk groceries for someone else’s household.
She’d done this before. An elderly man years earlier. Same playbook. Same attorney handling both victims across thirteen years. Fired from a caregiving agency for misusing client data, she kept working privately invisible to every system designed to stop her.
Then came the exit. A secluded house purchased before she emptied the storage unit. A U-Haul returned with 460 extra miles. Forty-three boxes never delivered to charity. A death at a remote hospital she’d established herself at months earlier. Eighteen months later, her executor quietly bought that house.
The Caregiver’s Game is a forensic true crime investigation and a warning for every family with an aging parent. It exposes how caregiver fraud hides in plain sight in the credit card statements no one checks, the groceries that don’t add up, the documents signed by someone who can’t understand them and it arms you with the warning signs before it’s too late.
If the charges on your parent’s credit card don’t make sense, this book will show you what to look for. And what happens when no one does.
Both a true crime investigation and a safeguard. For readers of Ann Rule and for every adult child who worries about a parent, especially the ones who think it could never happen to them.
