The Virginia State Crime Commission recently completed its task of reporting on efforts to enact laws to protect vulnerable elders from financial exploitation.
You can read their easy to read and understand report here
Only recently issued on November 13th it includes a really nice summary of what’s happening in OTHER states and what has been introduced in Virginia’s Legislature regarding laws to protect vulnerable adults from financial exploitation. None have successfully been enacted into law in Virginia. Yet.
My personal opinion is that it would be nice to have some criminal laws with a bit more “teeth” in them to go after perpetrators of financial exploitation against the elderly. I would sometimes like to take a baseball bat to them, but that would probably land ME in jail so that’s out. But at a bare minimum, heightened sentencing for elder-swindling seems worth considering. We do it for other forms of “aggravated” crimes.
Also, I thought it was interesting that they found that “An exploitation that involves a power of attorney appears to be easier to prosecute than one where there is no fiduciary duty between the parties.” Plenty of that kind of exploitation going on around here! One of the issues might be to look at who is writing the PoA’s and who honored them – even when they suspected foul play. I recently had a new client tell me that another attorney told her that her husband, recently admitted to a locked “memory” unit with advanced stage Alzheimer’s disease, could execute a new Power of Attorney in her favor as long as he could mark an “X” on the paper and have two witnesses sign it before a notary. Seriously. An attorney gave her that “advice.” And got paid for his trouble too.
The Commission found that, in the meantime, (that is, while we wait for better criminal laws) it is possible to successfully prosecute under the existing theft crime laws: embezzlement, larceny, larceny by trick, and false pretenses. Perhaps there are a couple of more…. fraud, credit card fraud, check kiting. There are even a few FEDERAL crimes one might prosecute if a scheme is perpetrated by postal system, over the “wires” (includes internet) or interstate.
I reckon we oughta’ get on it. Law Enforcement? Commonwealth’s Attorneys? Are you with me?
