A little over two years ago here, I posted this story about how my mother, not long before she left this world, was victimized by two separate caregivers. Both charged items to her credit card without her knowledge and one forged three checks on her checking account. My mother was at the time legally-blind but she had me monitoring her bank accounts.
I caught the crimes, got the caregivers fired by their agency and went to the police with what the detectives there described as "open and shut proof." Alas, as thievery goes, this was one of the less-pressing cases for them. My mother was not out on the street. She was not really hurting because of the financial loss, especially because she had me…so our cases went to the bottom of a very tall pile. As far as I know, they're still there.
Still, these outrages have something of an ending. The police may be too swamped and short-handed to go after the two ladies but I had my demon attorney, Paul S. Levine, go after the caregiver agency. I believe they lied to me when they told me this had never happened before in the history of their business, and that they also did not do enough to prosecute the thieves. They had been advertised as "bonded" and I believed this entitled me to reimbursement even though they told me it did not.
Since I told you the first part of this tale, I felt I should report that we just settled out of court for an amount of money I would describe as satisfactory. I would gladly give it back if that meant the two criminals would be properly prosecuted but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
For all I know, they are still caregiving and perhaps even stealing from the aged and ill. If you have an aged or ill person in your life and they have a caregiver, you might do them a big favor by monitoring their financial transactions. Based on my experiences, about 97% of caregivers do not steal from their clients but that 3% can do a great deal of damage…and the victims are usually not in any position to realize it until that damage is done.