A Trial in Vegas
By David Holmberg
Her name is April Parks. She was a court-appointed guardian for the elderly in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was also a criminal, prosecutors say.
They portray her as a villainous poster child for the calculated abuse of the elderly by a guardianship system rife with the ruthless greediness of guardians who turned their clients' lives into a nightmare of upheaval, uncertainty, and financial depletion.
In Las Vegas, there is the disturbing story of Rudy and Rennie North. It's not, unfortunately, a unique one in this maze of opportunistic criminality.
A recent article in the New Yorker focused on Parks and the Norths, a couple in their late 70s who had some health problems but were comfortable in their home in an adult community with a view of a golf course. They'd been married for 57 years.
Then, in 2013, Parks barged into their lives. She had them declared incompetent, moved them into an assisted living facility not nearly as desirable as the home they'd enjoyed, and took over management of their assets as a profit-making legal maneuver—a typical strategy employed by guardians like Parks.
After a prolonged struggle with her and the system, the Norths eventually wound up living in cramped quarters with their daughter, who had fought their maltreatment vigorously. Parks spent all their money (the precise amount is not known), leaving the Norths totally dependent on their child.
It took years and a concentrated reform effort by state and local government officials, politicians, lawyers, and journalists to curtail the devious and profitable use of the system by Parks and others.
Parks had about 400 "wards" like the Norths in her twelve years as a guardian, apparently making money on most or all of them. Incidentally, the insensitive term "wards" has been replaced in legal documents by "the proposed protected person," according to Las Vegas attorney Christine Miller, who works at the Legal Aid Center for Southern Nevada. She said the linguistic alteration is part of a "more person-centered, rights-centered system."
Translation: in Nevada, guardians like Parks are no longer in control.
On May 7, in Clark County Family Court in Las Vegas, Parks will go to trial along with three other defendants, including her husband, Gary Neal Taylor. The 123-page indictment in the case was termed "the most significant guardianship indictment in Nevada history" by Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who said it should "send a message" to the state's court-appointed guardians. The indictment includes 270 criminal counts and 150 victims who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It's a depressing compendium of elder abuse with an intriguing primary charge: racketeering. People familiar with the Parks case said racketeering was an unusual charge to bring in such indictments but asserted that it was fully justified given the notorious lead defendant.
The defendants were also charged with theft, exploitation of an older person/vulnerable person, offering a false instrument for filing or recording, and perjury. In the indictment's language, Parks and her partners "used their position to steal funds belonging to elderly and disabled persons—over whom they had guardianship authority—through the use of a series of fraudulent billing practices."
The names of victims and what they lost are all there: Dorothy Trumbich, $167,204.49; John and Sally Denton, $25,278.57; Baxter Burns, $32,006.72; William Flewellen, $4,807.61; Audrey Weber, $3,819.60. And on and on.
A crusading Las Vegas editor named Rana Goodman told the Silver Standard that with "so much money and so many people" involved in the indictment, the racketeering charge was not unexpected.
Goodman, 76, is political editor of the Vegas Voice, a newspaper for senior communities. During the intense effort to combat guardianship abuse, she termed Parks' conduct a "(legal) elder abuse racket." She also circulated a reform petition to the state legislature that garnered 3,000 signatures.
Not surprisingly, Goodman endorsed the racketeering charge in the Parks case, saying that Parks "tried to take every penny possible" from her clients and "used every dirty trick in the book" to squeeze them.
The prosecution, she said, "wants to throw away the key on this woman."
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The Parks case has been a major catalyst for reform of the guardianship system in Nevada. Miller and another Las Vegas attorney spoke in interviews with the Silver Standard recently about those changes, contained in a new law passed by the state legislature.
Improved oversight of the system is the law's key component, and that includes two important stipulations for the vulnerable elderly: they now have the power to choose their guardian if they should require one, and they're entitled to immediate legal representation.
Miller said the elderly should be encouraged to file estate-planning documents before any mental and physical deterioration sets in, and in doing so should name a potential guardian. Such a document could ultimately be used to fend off predatory guardians who fixate on someone's visible decline.
Elizabeth Brookfield, a 20-year veteran of guardianship law in Las Vegas, touted the many changes in "the way things get done" under the new law. But, she said, the biggest change is that "everyone now (considered for guardianship) must have a lawyer."
Nevada, of course, is by no means the only state coping with guardianship abuse, or widespread abuse of the elderly in general. In fact, the New Yorker article speculated that "approximately ten per cent of people older than 65 are thought to be victims of 'elder abuse'—a construct that has yet to enter public consciousness as child abuse has."
But there have been many egregious cases documented in recent years, before the flurry of publicity in Nevada and the exposure of people like Parks. Two of the worst-case examples: in New York in 2008, an attorney appointed as a guardian for an 82-year-old Alzheimer's patient misappropriated approximately $327,000 for himself, family, and friends. He used some of the money for home improvement, mortgage payments, and other expenses. His law license was suspended, and the court ordered him to pay $403,149 to the estate. In Colorado in 2005, a guardian who was an accountant stole $2 million from a 101-year-old Alzheimer's patient and used $1 million for his company and personal purchases. He also loaned $1 million to his family and friends. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison and was ordered to pay restitution of over $2.5 million.
And recent statistics suggest that elder abuse may soon achieve a dubious parity with child abuse. It may be another "construct" that can and should preoccupy us as a society.
Said a New York Times story last July: "The National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit think tank, estimates that guardians across the country supervise 1.3 million adults and an aggregate of $50 billion of their assets. Brenda K. Uekert, the center's principal court research consultant, said that with the 'aging of the Baby Boomers and the onset of dementia, we expect those numbers to go up.'"
The General Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington, re-examining the state-based guardianship system, has identified hundreds of cases of physical and financial abuse, as well as negligence, throughout the country. According to the Times, "in November, 2016, the GAO reported that in eight cases it examined in six states, guardians were found to have stolen more than $600,000 from their elderly wards." And a 2010 GAO report reinforced the grim reality that guardianship abuse is not a new phenomenon; April Parks, as accused, is not a new variety of criminal abuser. From 1990 to 2010, the report found, guardians in 20 cases stole $5.4 million.