DEL.ICIO.USDECATUR
DeKalb efforts help elderly fraud victims
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, June 14, 2009
At 92, unsteady on his feet and hard of hearing, Harold Williams needed someone to care for him.
After returning to his Decatur home from a stay in a rehab center, Williams answered an ad placed by Rukhsana Burton’s caregiver company, signed her up for $14 an hour and had her come by six days a week.
Bita Honarvar/bhonarvar@ajc.com
Rukhsana Burton is questioned at a hearing June 4 in DeKalb Superior Court. Burton was a caregiver who pleaded guilty to taking money from her elderly client Harold Williams.
Burton, 29, took care of Williams’ household needs, ran him on errands and, only a couple of months into the job, swindled the former Defense Department industrial engineer out of a large chunk of his life’s savings. By the time Burton was arrested, she had forged Williams’ name on more than two dozen checks totaling more than $200,000.
Williams is like many retirees who want to spend their golden years in the homes they’ve lived in for decades instead of moving into an institutionalized setting. Not only is it more comfortable, it’s also more affordable. But it also puts elderly residents in vulnerable positions, with their caregivers often having the run of the house, often with access to their client’s finances and the mail.
Williams fell prey to what DeKalb District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming calls an “opportunist” — a caregiver who comes into the home or a family relative who lives there and takes advantage of an elderly victim.
Fleming has made it a priority to prosecute those who exploit the elderly, allowing a prosecutor, three investigators and a victim-witness advocate help with the growing case load. Her office also uses aggressive, innovative and empathetic means to pursue these cases.
“It saddens me to say that these cases are very prevalent and growing in frequency,” Fleming said, noting her office received five new cases last week. Fleming said she suspects the upswing is an unfortunate byproduct of a sour economy.
DeKalb has one of the only district attorney’s offices in the state with such a dedicated task force focused on elder exploitation. The Fulton DA’s office also has one dedicated elder abuse/exploitation attorney who prosecutes these cases.
Jeanne Canavan, who heads DeKalb’s white collar crime unit, is one of the few prosecutors in Georgia to use an obscure state law — the Protections of Disabled Adults and Elder Persons Act — to send perpetrators away for up to five years in prison. She brings that charge in every elderly abuse case, in addition to counts alleging forgery, identity fraud and theft.
“We are seeing elderly victims with their life savings wiped out, their homes taken away,” Canavan said. “They take everything they have. We’ve seen this happen over and over and over.”
Burton, who operated Caregivers of Atlanta, began working for Williams in the summer of 2007. That fall, after Williams deposited a sizeable check from his investment account in the bank, Burton began forging his checks over to herself and her company.
She started out relatively small — a $2,000 check here, an $8,000 check there. On the checks, she wrote that Williams was giving her a bonus, making a donation or paying for her nursing service.
She signed over Williams’ checks regularly and often. By mid-December, Burton had forged 20 checks totalling almost $180,000. On Dec. 16, 2007, she struck hard, forging one check for $40,000, another for $80,000. A month later, DeKalb police were alerted to the fraud after Williams discovered some of the checks he mailed to pay his bills were returned for insufficient funds.
Burton struck a deal and pleaded guilty. She told the court she used some of the money to help pay off her grandmother’s medical bills and to buy herself a car. At the time of her arrest, Burton had $99,109 of Williams’ money in her bank account. The money has since been returned.
Burton was sentenced to seven years in prison. Once she is released, she must begin making periodic restitution payments for the rest of the $109,000 she took from Williams. If she serves her entire term, Williams will be 100 years old when she begins making the payments.
In a recent interview, Williams, a widower with no children or close relatives, said he was shocked and devastated when he discovered what Burton had done to him.
“I would have trusted her with my life,” he said. “That’s how much confidence I had in her.”
When Burton entered her guilty plea, she turned to Williams, apologized and asked for his forgiveness. Williams broke down, sobbing.
Other DeKalb County prosecutions of elder exploitation fraud include:
? Patricia Ngando pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to three years in prison for taking $140,000 from her 90-year-old client. Ngando spent much of the money on lottery tickets, prosecutors said.
? Felicia Harvey was indicted last month on charges she paid her mortgage and utility bills from her 97-year-old client’s bank account and forged multiple checks totaling at least $16,000.
? Timothy Ware was convicted last year of taking advantage of his godfather while living in his home and caring for him. Ware got the retired 83-year-old salesman to unwittingly sign over possession of his $275,000 home just after his release from the hospital, where he was treated for dementia. Before his arrest, Ware sold the house for $206,000. He is now serving 5 years in prison.
? Rakeishla Whitehead, a teller at a Bank of America branch, befriended an 84-year-old woman who regularly came by to make her deposits. Over a four-month period last summer during which they began going out to lunch together, Whitehead got temporary ATM cards and took more than $64,000 from the woman’s account. Whitehead pleaded guilty earlier this year.
Once a case is indicted, Canavan moves quickly to secure the elderly victims’ testimony out of concern they may be unable to testify by the time the case goes to trial. She takes a novel approach, filing court motions that cite a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court precedent that requires pre-trial testimony to be admitted only if the witness had previously been subject to cross-examination.
Canavan obtains a judge’s approval for a hastily called hearing, where the victim testifies before a prosecutor, the defendant and the defense attorney, who is allowed to cross examine the witness. The testimony, if needed, can be used later at trial.
Canavan said she will not forget her first elderly exploitation case in 2004 involving 89-year-old widower Leonard Stewart. Stewart was dining alone at a DeKalb restaurant when he was approached by Nicholas Marks. Marks befriended the elderly man, falsely identifying himself as a lawyer. Over time, Marks got Stewart to sign over possession of his car and his home. He also charged more than $22,000 on Stewart’s credit cards.
By the time of trial, Leonard was dead. But because he testified at a pre-trial bond hearing — during which he was subject to cross-examination — Leonard’s testimony was admitted into evidence. Marks was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
Canavan had Williams, the retired Defense Department engineer, testify months before Burton was to stand trial. Asked if he intended to give her anything other than a prior loan and her hourly wages, Williams testified, “Nothing more than the price of two cheeseburgers on a Sunday after church was over.”
Canavan, a DeKalb prosecutor for 15 years, said she tries to think of how her late grandmother, who taught her how to play cards and make butter cookies, would like to be treated if she were in such a situation.
The DA’s office recently bought a wheelchair to give elderly victims easy access into and around the courthouse. Canavan saw the need for one when she realized one of her elderly victims, a 90-year-old woman with macular degeneration, would struggle getting to court.
Investigators also drive to pick up elderly victims and take them to court. “We give them door-to-door service,” Canavan said.
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