All posts by case-abuse

ABUSE of PROCESS- WA Attorney Generals lie about APS lifetime abuse registry

APS-AG backed NO due Process ABUSE registry, ,

WA state Attorney General denies the accused a jury, lies about the law and lies about the accused.  No due process. You go one the registry first and have to appeal to get off it. The accused has to prove themselves innocent, no free attorney. The public has to represent themselves or pay over $100,000 in attorney fees to get off the registry. NO criminal conviction to be put on it. It is worse than the sex offender registry.   See :  Write up on APS registry and comparison with sex offender registry.

Assumed Guilty- Prove yourself innocent- Ferguson’s attorneys lie about the law and lie about the accused- No Due Process

Adult Protective Services Lifetime Vulnerable Adult abuse registry

7000 are on a LIFE TIME abuse registry who did not get a jury or a fair hearing

If you are on it, you didn’t get a fair hearing because the Attorney General’s office violates every constitutional protections allowed accused persons.

RCW 74.39A.056(3) registry codified vs RCW 74.34 used by DSHS to abuse the public.

The Attorney Generals will never mention the law which creates the registry RCW 74.39A.056(3). It is only for those people licensed by DSHS. The Attorney Generals will fight and lie using tax payer dollars to put everyone on it whether even if you are obviously innocent

See :  Write up on APS registry and comparison with sex offender registry. The sex offender is 5 years max for a criminal conviction and the APS abuse registry is lifetime based on the word of a social worker called an “APS agent” with no conviction at all.

Inslee $5 million no-bid contracts

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The research in this is good: Original article at: https://culpforgovernor.com/jay-inslee-private-lockdown/

Our state was devastated by high priced consultants hired by Jay Inslee.

Short Version: our governor utilized state funds to personally choose a high priced consulting firm that was unproven in results. He avoided seeking competitive options to safeguard Washington. He ended up with a biased set of actions that left hundreds of thousands unemployed, a huge number underemployed, devastated our economy, bankrupted thousands of businesses, and destroyed an untold number of families.

The Long Version…

Today’s topic of discussion is about how Jay Inslee destroyed the state economy and decided to keep the state in perpetual lockdown.

Do you know that Jay Inslee spent $165,000 a week for corporate COVID analysts to tell us how our state needs to behave?

(If you want to read it, here is the contract.)

The contract in question is with McKinsey & Company – a U.S. based consulting firm boasting worldwide employees with over $8B in revenue.

Contracts that literally affect the entire state and future of our population are generally deemed important. Our state has a specific process for collecting bids from capable vendors to prevent exclusive and favorable contracts. Jay Inslee chose to use a no-bid process and eliminate these competitive bids using “special market conditions” and emergency procurement processes through the Washington Department of Enterprise Services (RCW 39.26.130) (*Instead of consulting with the Legislature?)

Jay Inslee authorized a $1.32M contract that quickly escalated into roughly $5M of additional business with the State of Washington. The McKinsey team then turned around and used Washington’s no-bid case study to engage similar projects in other states such as New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and Maine. It became a never ending cash cow that generated upwards of $100M in additional McKinsey contracts. 

An example from Maine’s $2.84 Million dollar project reads:

(You can read the Maine.gov contract here HERE)

The total of the three no-bid Washington pandemic response contracts that McKinsey was given by Jay Inslee had a combined $5 million value. These included making the governor a tool ($1.32 Million), figuring out how messed up the employment security fraud situation was (another $2.4 million), and work to match coronavirus tests with Medicaid ($1.2 Million.)

How did Jay Inslee choose to lockdown Washington?

The truth is that we still don’t know!

As Jay Inslee’s decision to shutdown our state needed support, he turned to the McKinsey team for the ‘data and the science’ he preached in his daily press conferences. His decision to utilize a no-bid process meant that he could contract with a vendor that supported his personal assumptions and political motives with no oversight by the people he serves.

We do know the data and key metrics that were ultimately used to lockdown our state for over six months was orchestrated by the McKinsey team.

This data was never shared with the public. 

The reports, formulas, and agreed goals of the ‘science’ used were never shared.

The team was never vetted or compared to other firms due to Jay Inslee using a no-bid contract.  

This team consisted of 10 people.

(*We created a graphic detailing how consulting teams are generally structured.)

What do we know about this team?

As a consulting group, McKinsey saw the value of influencing state and national industry changes that affected core business sectors. McKinsey rotated hundreds of employees to provide Covid-19 business consulting around the globe and scrambled for the consulting revenue (check out McKinsey.com)

We know that this team of 10 people were not full time on Washington’s shutdown project. In fact Dr. Jordan VanLare was a named Engagement Director on a similar $5.4M Covid-19 contract with the state of New Jersey happening at the same time (contract here.)

Almost all of this team was virtual and had little expertise or understanding of Washington state community or economic impacts. Only one member of the executive partners was operating out of Bellevue, WA. Other ‘core experts’ resided in Washington D.C., New York, and Maryland.

Why did this destroy our economy?

The McKinsey team responsible for designing our shutdown metrics had no SMB expert (Small and Medium Business) – the lifeblood of our local communities and employment. The McKinsey team acted as quickly as possible to secure multiple state contracts and used Washington as the guinea pig.

Do not let Jay Inslee and corporate consultants destroy our state.

Share. Vote. Take a stand.

If you are asking why Seattle is a glimmer of what it was, why unemployment and underemployment is the new norm, why lockdowns oppose World Health Organization recommendations, and why small businesses are being destroyed in favor of big brands….

Just follow the money.

WA Attorney General- Ferguson

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Bob Ferguson needs to be put out of office- We can’t afford Ferguson—-Get the criminals out of office—–

Tell the truth: What has the office of the Attorney General done to make life harder for you or someone you know?

Have you had a court case where the attorneys from the WA AG’s office lied in court?

Have you made a complaint about misconduct or criminal activity to WA state Office of the Attorney General and they made some excuse for not doing anything?

How They Get Away with Egregious Professional Guardianship Fraud

Articles on Guardianship Abuse, FL, King County, WA, WA State

(Professional Guardianship Abuse is accomplished under “Color of Law” and Remains Hidden from Public Knowledge!)

By Michael Larsen   February 9, 2018,

Published Feb 10, 2018 by the Reluctant Activists

Once judged incompetent and placed under a conservatorship [or guardianship], a citizen becomes a nonperson, with fewer rights than a convicted felon in a penitentiary. – Robert Case, Editor, Bloomberg Wealth Manager

Despite the recent valiant efforts by AARP, The New Yorker, U.S. News and World Report and a few other leading media organizations to shine a spotlight on professional guardianship fraud, it still remains unknown to most of the general public. This fraud is known to government officials who have pondered what to do for years. As stated in the REUTERS U.S. News article, “The abuses of private-guardian systems in some U.S. states have been on the radar screens of policy and legal experts for years.”

Most of us have no idea that professional guardianship fraudsters are able to successfully deflect and resist efforts to reform their lucrative but very corrupt misuse of the judicial system. How do they continue to get away with these crimes? They commit these crimes under “color of law!”

When judges in the courts render horrifically unjust decisions under “color of law,” and people like you and me complain to the police, the law enforcement agencies are normally not able to intervene at all because it appears that the courts are acting lawfully!

Though this is technically legal, it is supremely important that the public understands what “color of law” actually involves! Any government official acting in that role who acts in a way that violates the law regulating that function is acting under “color of law.” “Acting under color of law occurs when the official abuses their power in violation of the law while pretending to be acting in accordance with the law.”

For example, if a police officer shoots a defenseless individual for no justifiable reason at all, he would be acting under color of law.

Another example also occurs at times: if a District Attorney refuses to prosecute a criminal, because the accused is his best friend, he would be acting under color of law. If the same District Attorney then found some charge to prosecute the individual who brought the complaint against his criminal friend, the District Attorney would be acting under color of law.

In professional guardianship fraud, an Order of Contempt is also often used by corrupt judges and attorneys against a family member or close friends of the victim who are trying to help in hopes of derailing their efforts.

An Order of Contempt is a criminal charge and should not be used in a civil matter; however, corrupt civil judges have no problem misusing this charge in their courtroom under color of law. Two cases involving professional guardianship fraud that illustrate “color of law” and the illegal use of “Contempt of Court Orders” are given below.

The Case of Attorney Barbara Stone & Her mother Helen

Barbara Stone traveled to Florida from her home in New York to find her mother emaciated in a nursing home where she was under guardianship (Barbara mistakenly thought placing her in a nursing home for care would be a way to protect her mother from harm). Finding no one around to help her, Barbara used a wheelchair and put her mother in her car, and tried to take her to Denny’s Restaurant for lunch. Barbara was stopped by police and thrown in jail, and her mother was taken to a hospital where it was verified that she was malnourished, dehydrated, bruised, and a host of othermedical problems from lack of care under guardianship.

That was 2013. Fast forward to 2018 and consider that Barbara was thrown in jail four times in Florida trying to help her mother by going to police, FBI, and suing in court to get relief. She was placed on probation as the only means of getting out of jail and realizing she could be next, fled to Arizona to live.

Shockingly, Barbara was picked up there in Arizona and after a six month jail stay was extradited to Florida. At her first hearing, her attorney naively thought she would easily be released for time served, especially considering what most people would consider to be a minor offense in trying to take her mother to lunch. This was the offense:

On December 20, 2013, Barbara Stone was arrested for multiple charges involving her elderly mother, Helen Stone. Though Barbara removed her mother from the nursing home simply to feed her lunch, there was a restraining order and the court orders required that all contact with her mother had to be supervised. Barbara Stone was ultimately charged with one (1) count of custodial interference with an elderly person (her Mother), a Third Degree Felony and Level 4 Offense!

Barbara Stone was a former attorney with no prior criminal record. At the time of the Florida November 2017 hearing, who should appear in court but two former judges, several attorneys, the guardian and others all claiming Barbara had “ruined their lives” due to her letters and attempts to help her mother. The judge was a close associate of one of the former judges and recused herself. The next hearing was set for January 8, 2018 where this same group of predators came to scream at Barbara for several hours. The judge gave her three years in prison!

One of the reasons for the three year sentence was that a former judge said Barbara was in “contempt of court.” The former judge, Michael G, used his courtroom in Miami, Florida to isolate guardianship victims, harass and intimidate victims’ families and as in most probate court guardianship situations, operated under color of law.

As of February 2018, Barbara Stone is 65 years old, has been incarcerated since June 2017, and in the eyes of the guardianship predators, she is considered “dangerous.” She is taken to court hearings usually six or more hours prior to the hearing in shackles where she sits with other inmates who may be screaming, crying, yelling, etc. Jail itself is horrific – imagine yourself in a room with 40 or more other women all day and all night who are coming off drugs/alcohol addictions or mentally ill and screaming most of that time.

Another hearing is scheduled for the end of February 2018. Two attorneys are presenting two motions. One motion is to mitigate the sentence since Barbara has already served 508 days in jail which includes the time she was first jailed in Florida, then Arizona, and now again in Florida, and the other motion is to correct the illegal sentence and unjust punishment meted out to Barbara.

We hope this will end favorably and Barbara Stone will be released; however, favorable outcomes are rare in guardianship matters.

The Case of Mr. and Mrs. Peterson and Ted Mottman

[names changed to protect the innocent]

The second example of a court operating under color of law and the wrongful use of the charge Contempt of Court is taken from the book GUARDIANSHIP FRAUD and prepared by Anthony Damon who interviewed witnesses and took the major section for his story from the Appellate Brief written by attorneys for Mr. and Mrs. Peterson.

This matter involves a court-ordered guardianship victim named Ted Mottman who was living in Seattle, Washington, and his friends, Jerry and Janet Peterson, who live in Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Mottman inherited a sum close to $20 million from his parents in 2010. In early 2011, Ted Mottman, at 63 years old, filed for divorce from his 3rd wife whom he thought was a sociopath, and he visited his neurologist and received a clean-bill-of-health.

It is believed that when his wife found out Ted was planning to leave Seattle and fly to Tucson, Arizona to live until the divorce was finalized, she drugged him. She moved back into his home to keep him isolated, immobilized with psychotropic drugs, and unable to defend himself.

It was her plan to have his status as a competent adult nullified by a court so that he would be declared a vulnerable adult. She even presented as fact the completely false assertion that Ted had been declared to have dementia for several years. To declare someone legally incompetent to conduct one’s own affairs is a formal medical determination and requires a physician’s exam and finding to be valid legally.

The Petersons had been in almost daily contact with Ted regarding his renting a home in Tucson, his flight schedule, and concerns about Ted’s safety from the wife he was divorcing. Ted mentioned on several occasions his fear of his wife. Janet Peterson worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Jerry Peterson had worked for The Boeing Company in their Defense Operations.

Because of their close relationship to Ted, they were sued to keep them quiet and to keep them from trying to help free Ted. The reason given for the lawsuit was that since Ted Mottman had been “declared to have dementia for several years” the Petersons were trying to take advantage of him for his money. Since this reason was false, it follows that all of the court proceedings and orders for the next two years were accomplished under Color of Law. They appeared to be lawful acts but were not.

The suit against the Petersons was filed in Commissioner V’s — (could this be KC Commissioner Carlos Velategui?) probate court by an attorney for those seeking to make Ted Mottman a “vulnerable adult,” to place him under their control, and to control of all his wealth and assets. The Petersons responded to this lawsuit by stating that Mr. Mottman had never been declared incompetent, that the lawsuit was ‘smoke and mirrors’ being used to hide the actual intent of his wife and her friend who wished to plunder Mr. Mottman’s assets.

Without medical records showing any prior determinations of incompetence or dementia, a pseudo psychological exam was done the day before the court hearing. Mr. Mottman’s wife answered most of the questions during the exam. With this stage set, the following comments are summarized from the Appellate Summary written two years later and illustrate Color of Law by attorneys, the court commissioner, Adult Protective Services, Bellevue Police, and the court-appointed guardian.

After the first court hearing in May 2011, the Petersons – who were trying to advocate for Mr. Mottman and prevent him from being victimized — were sued two additional times to keep them quiet. One suit accused them of being in Contempt of Court, because a friend of Ted Mottman, Mr. Kent, sent out emails about his situation. This was blamed on the Petersons. This should have been filed in a criminal court but was filed in Commissioner V’s civil court.

The purpose of the lawsuits against the Petersons, as in all improper professional guardianship cases, was to intimidate and threaten them to keep them quiet and to drain them of personal financial resources so that they were made to be completely unable to stop the predators from succeeding in their plot.

Astoundingly, in one lawsuit, the Petersons had to pay $60,000 for an email message that another of Ted’s friends wrote about his attempt to save Ted’s life. In addition to the $60,000 fine, the Petersons were given an Order for Protection that stated if they told anyone about Ted Mottman – including law enforcement or government agencies, they would face ten years in prison. Think about that; this is similar to Barbara Stone being incarcerated now for trying to help her mother!

Unfortunately, as was planned by the perpetrators, the Petersons had to end their appellate case due to lack of funds and a settlement was made, and it appeared that the other side wanted it ended too. The Petersons had to pay attorney fees for both sides, plus a color of law charge was made against the Petersons for defamation of Ted’s wife regarding things Ted said to others about her that appeared in others’ declarations to the court! Unbelievably, the Petersons had to pay Mrs. Mottman even though she had gained control over Mr. Mottman’s millions!

In addition to all of these payments, the Petersons would have to pay an additional fine of $80,000 if they said anything about Ted Mottman for the next five years (up through July 2017). A settlement was reached for three reasons: the Petersons had used up all of their life’s saving and borrowed from family, their attorneys could not be sure that an appellate judge would rule against a superior court judge no matter how blatantly his court operated illegally under color of law, and the perpetrators also could not be sure what the Appellate Court would do.

This uncertainty was a gamble for both sides. This crime could happen to anyone and is happening to people all over the country!

The Appellate Brief Summary illustrated that attorneys against the Petersons knowingly and willfully brought misleading and false charges to promote their cause from the onset. Below are some of the more startling of these statements and charges.

The attorney for the wife and her friend who helped drug Mr. Mottman brought their petition against the Petersons falsely stating Mr. Mottman had been diagnosed with dementia for several years, knowing the diagnoses was never done until the day prior to the hearing.

A few months later, a nurse friend of the Petersons reviewed the physician’s diagnostic report. Since this nurse had read these types of reports for 30 years, she stated to the Petersons’ attorney that this was not a standard report and lacked any firm evidence of dementia. Once this was reported to the attorney for the court-appointed guardian, all of the attorneys involved in putting Mr. Mottman into guardianship threatened to sue the Petersons if the Petersons didn’t sign an agreement that they would tell no one about Mr. Mottman’s situation, or they would be heavily fined.

The Petersons’ attorney told the Petersons emphatically that this commissioner always ruled in favor of the guardian and that they might lose “hundreds of thousands of dollars if they didn’t sign this document.”

The nurse was so upset about the situation facing Mr. Mottman that she wrote to the police and Adult Protective Services in Seattle asking them to investigate this matter. Her letter to Adult Protective Services was supposed to be confidential as are all complaints to Adult or Child Protective Services. The attorney for the guardian made false statements about the Petersons to the court in order to obtain the confidential documents that pertained to the complaint to Adult Protective Services.

The attorney for the guardian falsely stated in court that Ms. Peterson was a “stalker” and was behind emails and mailings sent out by others who were aware of Mr. Mottman’s sudden isolation.

The attorney for the guardian filed a request for finding of Contempt of Court against the Petersons in the same civil court rather than with the King County Prosecutor as should have been the case. The court commissioner ignored the Petersons’ attorneys’ request to identify any alleged act(s) the Petersons committed to warrant the finding and instead awarded unreasonable and excessive attorneys’ fees of $28,000 that the Petersons had to pay.

The commissioner also sanctioned the Petersons another punitive $20,000, which was imposed in violation of the law (RCW 7.21030(2)). In addition to that, the commissioner awarded another $30,000 in damages without a showing of actual damages incurred since the court issued its order in June 2012 with no showing that any injury was proximately caused by the Petersons’ conduct.

The attorney for the wife of Mr. Mottman falsely claimed to the Court that Ms. Peterson was responsible for defamation comments about Ms. Mottman when these comments were made by Mr. Mottman to others who wrote declarative statements of this fact that are part of the Court record.

Major witnesses reported to the Petersons’ attorney that the Bellevue Police Department and Adult Protective Services investigators never contacted them for an interview to ascertain the facts of this matter

Is it a coincidence that Mr. Mottman’s wife worked for the Bellevue City Prosecutor’s Office and that she requested Detective Thomas to call a major witness in order to intimidate him? According to Mr. Kent, a close friend of Mr. Mottman who spoke to Mr. Mottman on the phone and tried to rescue Mr. Mottman from the house following that conversation, Detective Thomas had no interest regarding the statements Mr. Mottman made to Mr. Kent in Mr. Mottman’s request for help from this friend of many years. The detective told him instead that Ms. Peterson was behind lies that Mr. Mottman was isolated, and that Mr. Mottman’s wife was just trying to keep Mr. Mottman safe from the harm of others since he had dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Detective Thomas called Ms. Peterson to intimidate her and stated that he was involved in reports from Mr. Mottman’s wife regarding her belief she was being harassed. It was a direct conflict of the agreement signed by all parties that no one would go to law enforcement.

As mentioned, the Tucson nurse also wrote to the Chief of the Bellevue Police Department requesting an investigation of Mr. Mottman. The Chief of Police responded to this request from the nurse by stating her department was not going to investigate this matter and referred her to Adult Protective Services, which she had already done.

Adult Protective Services not only ignored the request for an investigation, they sided in all ways with the court appointed guardian. The APS case worker, Marie Alex, responded to the nurse that all Mr. Mottman could say was “Yes” or “No” and that in her opinion Mr. Mottman had severe dementia. This was eight days after Mr. Mottman was seen by Dr. Wagner who reported that Mr. Mottman got up to greet him, they talked, and Mr. Mottman correctly identified the Governor of Washington and that Mr. Mottman needed stimulation.

Ms. Alex of APS also called Mr. Kent and told him that he must by lying about what Mr. Mottman said to him because Mr. Mottman was “not allowed to talk to anyone,” which clearly violates the Standards of Practice as set out by the National Guardianship Association and should have been investigated rigorously by APS.

These examples of the police and Adult Protective Service helping to promote this professional guardianship fraud scam against Mr. Mottman are common and illustrate how these organizations also operate illegally under color of law and how terribly difficult it is to fight this crime and save the life of a loved one once a motion to be appointed as a guardian has been filed and a corrupt judge acts to award the predatory guardianship.

In the case of Mr. Mottman, this guardianship racket was easily accomplished and without any sacrifice while the Petersons were financially destroyed! The predators made millions with little effort and the public knew nothing about the crimes that occurred.

Mr. Mottman died on December 5, 2015 as a ward of Guardian Services of Seattle (GSS). He was 68 years old. He had served in Vietnam and was a career law enforcement officer. The last four years of his life were spent in isolation and terror.

In their two year battle trying to save Mr. Mottman’s life, the Petersons spent around $250,000 in fees for all attorneys plus the fines imposed upon them. For a retired couple, these unjust fines and fees financially shattered them. Additionally they were threatened with ten years in prison and another $80,000 fine if they talked about this case for the next five years.

This pattern of widespread legal wrong-doing involving guardianship scams was further verified in the spring of 2017 when Ms. Peterson tried to re-enter the United States after visiting a friend in Mexico. When she was stopped by U.S. Customs Agents, Ms. Peterson was asked to pull over, her car keys taken, and was told to get out of her car. She was asked why she had an Order for Protection against her. As soon as she said that it was a guardianship matter, she was told to get back in her car and to proceed into the United States. The U.S. Customs Agent told her that those were “junk orders,” and he wished he could change her record to delete the Order for Protection but that he was unable to do so.

Thus, it’s clear that the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs Agents know that these guardianship abuse scams are accomplished under Color of Law. There are thousands of people like Ms. Peterson who have tried to re-enter the U.S. and have no criminal records, but have these Protection Orders issued by guardianship court judges. The agents know that these guardianship courts issue “junk orders” and therefore, they allow those individuals who were pulled over due to bogus “Orders of Protection” to re-enter the country without further delay.

These cases are given as illustrations of the total disregard that probate courts have for the rule of law. THE NEW YORKER article “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights” described how guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent. Believe this: it happens every single day to an unsuspecting elderly person who is of sound mind and competent to handle their own affairs.

ARRP recent published an article, “State Guardianship Systems Require Expedited Reform” and referred to egregious acts conducted by court-appointed guardians such as those described in the two cases above.

The reader may be thinking that the likelihood of this happening to them is fairly small. Let me pose these questions:

Do you have parents that are perfectly safe at all times and are you planning on living a long time?

Please realize that wills, trusts and durable powers of attorneys are not only ignored by probate court judges, they are disclaimed since the ward becomes the property of the court-appointed guardian. A simple slip-and-fall can land someone in the hospital where they are scooped up by a guardian and hidden in another location – and this happens all the time, especially if there is money involved.

One of the things I did recently was to re-write my Durable Power of Attorney and Health-Care Directive to state: “I reject the appointment of a court-appointed guardian.” These documents were given to family members, my doctor, and to others. I do not use an attorney. My home is in a trust. I’ve put the trust into an LLC that is in the name of family members. My hope is that this is enough protection, but under color of law handed out by corrupt judges, no assumptions can or should be made.

_______________________________________________________
Color of law:

U.S. Department of Justice: Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. For the purpose of Section 242, acts under “color of law” include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within their lawful authority, but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official’s lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties. Persons acting under color of law within the meaning of this statute include police officers, prisons guards and other law enforcement officials, as well as judges, care providers in public health facilities, and others who are acting as public officials. It is not necessary that the crime be motivated by animus toward the race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin of the victim. The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any.

Contempt of court:
There are essentially two types of contempt:
a) being rude, disrespectful to the judge or other attorneys or causing a disturbance in the courtroom, particularly after being warned by the judge;
b) willful failure to obey an order of the court. This latter can include failure to pay child support or alimony. The court’s power to punish for contempt (called “citing” one for contempt) includes fines and/or jail time (called “imposing sanctions”). Incarceration is generally just a threat and if imposed, usually brief. Since the judge has discretion to control the courtroom, contempt citations are generally not appealable unless the amount of fine or jail time is excessive. “Criminal contempt” involves contempt with the aim of obstruction of justice, such as threatening a judge or witness or disobeying an order to produce evidence.

Barbara Stone and her Mother Helen Stone:

Stone v. Hertz (1:14-cv-21776) (listing of legal motions/rulings)
US District Court, for Southern District of Florida
Filed: May 15, 2014 Accessed 2018 CourtListener.com
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4502299/stone-v-hertz/

Florida’s Guardians Often Exploit the Vulnerable Residents They’re Supposed to Protect
MICHAEL E. MILLER | MAY 8, 2014
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/floridas-guardians-often-exploit-the-vulnerable-residents-theyre-supposed-to-protect-6395605

Tucson Court to Hear Extradition of Woman Accused of Feeding her Mother
Janet Phelan June 25, 2017 Photographyisnotacrime.com
https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2017/06/tucson-court-hear-extradition-woman-accused-feeding-mother/

Disability Rights: When Is Taking Your Mother to Lunch a Felony?
BY JANET PHELAN Accessed 2018 LAProgressive.com
https://www.laprogressive.com/disability-rights/

Criminal Complaint filed nunc pro tunc vs Michael Genden, Roy Lustig, Jacqueline Hertz, Blaire Lapides and Alan Stone
By Barbara Stone September 2012
http://www.iviewit.tv/Barbara/counter/Criminal%20Complaint%20March%202,%202015.pdf

Complaint/Arrest Affidavit re Barbara Stone who took her mother to lunch at Denny’s Restaurant
Dec 19, 2103
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3877213/A-Form-Def-Stone.pdf

Fl forced competent widow into guardianship

Articles on Guardianship Abuse, FL

Dear Freinds

Please consider calling or writing an email to the Judge in this case:

Read till the end. The guardian in this case is well known to victims in Florida.

When Julia Googins, a long-time healthy, active widowed resident (and pioneering female pilot) of Lido Beach, reported to the police in 2017 that her bank accounts had been pilfered and sought to revoke her Durable Powers of Attorney and Trust documents, her attorney, Christopher Smith, filed 3 court petitions against Julia in order for her to be determined
incapacitated and put into involuntary guardianship. In his petitions, Christopher Smith stated under oath that Julia’s former neighbors, while they were acting as Julia’s Durable Powers of Attorneys and Trustees, had “added their names to her accounts and have made large deductions from those accounts to their own personal accounts.”

On July 26, 2017, Julia was taken to court and placed under the control of professional guardian Anne Ridings, who subsequently obtained numerous court orders from Judge Charles Williams to have law enforcement remove Julia from her home, sell her cars, and sell Julia’s second home in Sarasota. Immediately, Julia lost all control over her homes, cars, bank accounts, personal possessions, choices of health care, choices of residence, and decision-making. Since August 2017, Julia has been forced to
live in a nursing home in Bradenton, far away from her own homes, friends, and beloved Lido Beach lifestyle.

In other motions to Judge Charles Williams, Anne Ridings sought to have the same neighbors reinstated as Julia’s DPOAs and Trustees, despite the fact that Julia’s friends and advocates vociferously opposed any such reinstatement. Elder Advocate Dr. Beverly Newman petitioned the court to appoint her as DPOA and Trustee for Julia and to let Julia return home to Lido.

In court on December 6, 2017, Dr. Newman and two other persons testified that Julia Googins should not be put under the control of the same DPOAs and Trustees that had already been in control of Julia’s finances and had “made large deductions from [Julia’s] accounts to their own personal accounts.” Although Julia’s hearing was public, Julia was not brought by her professional guardian to her own hearing to testify for herself; despite Julia’s good health and excellent communication skills. Instead,
Julia was left at the nursing home by herself, unable to exercise her due process rights to tell the court her wishes and the facts of her case.

While ABC Action News and the public were present in the courtroom during Dr. Newman’s testimony, Judge Charles Williams has refused to permit Dr. Newman to buy the audio recording of her own testimony, and Julia continues to live out her life in a nursing home against her will. You can support Julia in her right to return home and to choose the persons who will protect her from further disruptions of her life and exploitation of her
assets.

Judge Charles Williams

Lynn N. Silvertooth Judicial Center, Courtroom 8B

cwilliams@jud12.flcourts.org

2002 Ringling Boulevard

Sarasota, Florida 34237

Phone: (941) 861-7942; Fax: (941) 861-7913

—

This message was sent by drsam@aaapg.net

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

Uncategorized

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.

By       A Reporter at Large
October 9, 2017 Issue

For years, Rudy North woke up at 9 a.m. and read the Las Vegas Review-Journal while eating a piece of toast. Then he read a novel—he liked James Patterson and Clive Cussler—or, if he was feeling more ambitious, Freud. On scraps of paper and legal notepads, he jotted down thoughts sparked by his reading. “Deep below the rational part of our brain is an underground ocean where strange things swim,” he wrote on one notepad. On another, “Life: the longer it cooks, the better it tastes.”

Rennie, his wife of fifty-seven years, was slower to rise. She was recovering from lymphoma and suffered from neuropathy so severe that her legs felt like sausages. Each morning, she spent nearly an hour in the bathroom applying makeup and lotions, the same brands she’d used for forty years. She always emerged wearing pale-pink lipstick. Rudy, who was prone to grandiosity, liked to refer to her as “my amour.”

On the Friday before Labor Day, 2013, the Norths had just finished their toast when a nurse, who visited five times a week to help Rennie bathe and dress, came to their house, in Sun City Aliante, an “active adult” community in Las Vegas. They had moved there in 2005, when Rudy, a retired consultant for broadcasters, was sixty-eight and Rennie was sixty-six. They took pride in their view of the golf course, though neither of them played golf.

Rudy chatted with the nurse in the kitchen for twenty minutes, joking about marriage and laundry, until there was a knock at the door. A stocky woman with shiny black hair introduced herself as April Parks, the owner of the company A Private Professional Guardian. She was accompanied by three colleagues, who didn’t give their names. Parks told the Norths that she had an order from the Clark County Family Court to “remove” them from their home. She would be taking them to an assisted-living facility. “Go and gather your things,” she said.

Rennie began crying. “This is my home,” she said.

One of Parks’s colleagues said that if the Norths didn’t comply he would call the police. Rudy remembers thinking, You’re going to put my wife and me in jail for this? But he felt too confused to argue.

Parks drove a Pontiac G-6 convertible with a license plate that read “crtgrdn,” for “court guardian.” In the past twelve years, she had been a guardian for some four hundred wards of the court. Owing to age or disability, they had been deemed incompetent, a legal term that describes those who are unable to make reasoned choices about their lives or their property. As their guardian, Parks had the authority to manage their assets, and to choose where they lived, whom they associated with, and what medical treatment they received. They lost nearly all their civil rights.

Without realizing it, the Norths had become temporary wards of the court. Parks had filed an emergency ex-parte petition, which provides an exception to the rule that both parties must be notified of any argument before a judge. She had alleged that the Norths posed a “substantial risk for mismanagement of medications, financial loss and physical harm.” She submitted a brief letter from a physician’s assistant, whom Rennie had seen once, stating that “the patient’s husband can no longer effectively take care of the patient at home as his dementia is progressing.” She also submitted a letter from one of Rudy’s doctors, who described him as “confused and agitated.”

Rudy and Rennie had not undergone any cognitive assessments. They had never received a diagnosis of dementia. In addition to Freud, Rudy was working his way through Nietzsche and Plato. Rennie read romance novels.

Parks told the Norths that if they didn’t come willingly an ambulance would take them to the facility, a place she described as a “respite.” Still crying, Rennie put cosmetics and some clothes into a suitcase. She packed so quickly that she forgot her cell phone and Rudy’s hearing aid. After thirty-five minutes, Parks’s assistant led the Norths to her car. When a neighbor asked what was happening, Rudy told him, “We’ll just be gone for a little bit.” He was too proud to draw attention to their predicament. “Just think of it as a mini-vacation,” he told Rennie.

After the Norths left, Parks walked through the house with Cindy Breck, the owner of Caring Transitions, a company that relocates seniors and sells their belongings at estate sales. Breck and Parks had a routine. “We open drawers,” Parks said at a deposition. “We look in closets. We pull out boxes, anything that would store—that would keep paperwork, would keep valuables.” She took a pocket watch, birth certificates, insurance policies, and several collectible coins.

The Norths’ daughter, Julie Belshe, came to visit later that afternoon. A fifty-three-year-old mother of three sons, she and her husband run a small business designing and constructing pools. She lived ten miles away and visited her parents nearly every day, often taking them to her youngest son’s football games. She was her parents’ only living child; her brother and sister had died.

She knocked on the front door several times and then tried to push the door open, but it was locked. She was surprised to see the kitchen window closed; her parents always left it slightly open. She drove to the Sun City Aliante clubhouse, where her parents sometimes drank coffee. When she couldn’t find them there, she thought that perhaps they had gone on an errand together—the farthest they usually drove was to Costco. But, when she returned to the house, it was still empty.

That weekend, she called her parents several times. She also called two hospitals to see if they had been in an accident. She called their landlord, too, and he agreed to visit the house. He reported that there were no signs of them. She told her husband, “I think someone kidnapped my parents.”

On the Tuesday after Labor Day, she drove to the house again and found a note taped to the door: “In case of emergency, contact guardian April Parks.” Belshe dialled the number. Parks, who had a brisk, girlish way of speaking, told Belshe that her parents had been taken to Lakeview Terrace, an assisted-living facility in Boulder City, nine miles from the Arizona border. She assured Belshe that the staff there would take care of all their needs.

“You can’t just walk into somebody’s home and take them!” Belshe told her.

Parks responded calmly, “It’s legal. It’s legal.”

Guardianship derives from the state’s parens patriae power, its duty to act as a parent for those considered too vulnerable to care for themselves. “The King shall have the custody of the lands of natural fools, taking the profits of them without waste or destruction, and shall find them their necessaries,” reads the English statute De Prerogative Regis, from 1324. The law was imported to the colonies—guardianship is still controlled by state, not federal, law—and has remained largely intact for the past eight hundred years. It establishes a relationship between ward and guardian that is rooted in trust.

In the United States, a million and a half adults are under the care of guardians, either family members or professionals, who control some two hundred and seventy-three billion dollars in assets, according to an auditor for the guardianship fraud program in Palm Beach County. Little is known about the outcome of these arrangements, because states do not keep complete figures on guardianship cases—statutes vary widely—and, in most jurisdictions, the court records are sealed. A Government Accountability report from 2010 said, “We could not locate a single Web site, federal agency, state or local entity, or any other organization that compiles comprehensive information on this issue.” A study published this year by the American Bar Association found that “an unknown number of adults languish under guardianship” when they no longer need it, or never did. The authors wrote that “guardianship is generally “permanent, leaving no way out—‘until death do us part.’ ”

When the Norths were removed from their home, they joined nearly nine thousand adult wards in the Las Vegas Valley. In the past twenty years, the city has promoted itself as a retirement paradise. Attracted by the state’s low taxes and a dry, sunny climate, elderly people leave their families behind to resettle in newly constructed senior communities. “The whole town sparkled, pulling older people in with the prospect of the American Dream at a reasonable price,” a former real-estate agent named Terry Williams told me. Roughly thirty per cent of the people who move to Las Vegas are senior citizens, and the number of Nevadans older than eighty-five has risen by nearly eighty per cent in the past decade.

In Nevada, as in many states, anyone can become a guardian by taking a course, as long as he or she has not been convicted of a felony or recently declared bankruptcy. Elizabeth Brickfield, a Las Vegas lawyer who has worked in guardianship law for twenty years, said that about fifteen years ago, as the state’s elderly population swelled, “all these private guardians started arriving, and the docket exploded. The court became a factory.”

Pamela Teaster, the director of the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Tech and one of the few scholars in the country who study guardianship, told me that, though most guardians assume their duties for good reasons, the guardianship system is “a morass, a total mess.” She said, “It is unconscionable that we don’t have any data, when you think about the vast power given to a guardian. It is one of society’s most drastic interventions.”

After talking to Parks, Belshe drove forty miles to Lakeview Terrace, a complex of stucco buildings designed to look like a hacienda. She found her parents in a small room with a kitchenette and a window overlooking the parking lot. Rennie was in a wheelchair beside the bed, and Rudy was curled up on a love seat in the fetal position. There was no phone in the room. Medical-alert buttons were strung around their necks. “They were like two lost children,” Belshe said.

She asked her parents who Parks was and where she could find the court order, but, she said, “they were overwhelmed and humiliated, and they didn’t know what was going on.” They had no idea how or why Parks had targeted them as wards. Belshe was struck by their passive acceptance. “It was like they had Stockholm syndrome or something,” she told me.

Belshe acknowledged that her parents needed a few hours of help each day, but she had never questioned their ability to live alone. “They always kept their house really nice and clean, like a museum,” she said. Although Rudy’s medical records showed that he occasionally had “staring spells,” all his medical-progress notes from 2013 described him as alert and oriented. He did most of the couple’s cooking and shopping, because Rennie, though lucid, was in so much pain that she rarely left the house. Belshe sometimes worried that her father inadvertently encouraged her mother to be docile: “She’s a very smart woman, though she sometimes acts like she’s not. I have to tell her, ‘That’s not cute, Mom.’ ”

When Belshe called Parks to ask for the court order, Parks told her that she was part of the “sandwich generation,” and that it would be too overwhelming for her to continue to care for her children and her parents at the same time. Parks billed her wards’ estates for each hour that she spent on their case; the court placed no limits on guardians’ fees, as long as they appeared “reasonable.” Later, when Belshe called again to express her anger, Parks charged the Norths twenty-four dollars for the eight-minute conversation. “I could not understand what the purpose of the call was other than she wanted me to know they had rights,” Parks wrote in a detailed invoice. “I terminated the phone call as she was very hostile and angry.”

A month after removing the Norths from their house, Parks petitioned to make the guardianship permanent. She was represented by an attorney who was paid four hundred dollars an hour by the Norths’ estate. A hearing was held at Clark County Family Court.

The Clark County guardianship commissioner, a lawyer named Jon Norheim, has presided over nearly all the guardianship cases in the county since 2005. He works under the supervision of a judge, but his orders have the weight of a formal ruling. Norheim awarded a guardianship to Parks, on average, nearly once a week. She had up to a hundred wards at a time. “I love April Parks,” he said at one hearing, describing her and two other professional guardians, who frequently appeared in his courtroom, as “wonderful, good-hearted, social-worker types.”

Norheim’s court perpetuated a cold, unsentimental view of family relations: the ingredients for a good life seemed to have little to do with one’s children and siblings. He often dismissed the objections of relatives, telling them that his only concern was the best interest of the wards, which he seemed to view in a social vacuum. When siblings fought over who would be guardian, Norheim typically ordered a neutral professional to assume control, even when this isolated the wards from their families.

Rudy had assured Belshe that he would protest the guardianship, but, like most wards in the country, Rudy and Rennie were not represented by counsel. As Rudy stood before the commissioner, he convinced himself that guardianship offered him and Rennie a lifetime of care without being a burden to anyone they loved. He told Norheim, “The issue really is her longevity—what suits her.” Belshe, who sat in the courtroom, said, “I was shaking my head. No, no, no—don’t do that!” Rennie was silent.

Norheim ordered that the Norths become permanent wards of the court. “Chances are, I’ll probably never see you folks again; you’ll work everything out,” he said, laughing. “I very rarely see people after the initial time in court.” The hearing lasted ten minutes.

The following month, Even Tide Life Transitions, a company that Parks often hired, sold most of the Norths’ belongings.  read rest of article at:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

Tucson Court to Hear Extradition of Woman Accused of Feeding her Mother

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Tucson Court to Hear Extradition of Woman Accused of Feeding her Mother:  link to Activist Post   

June 25, 2017

By Janet Phelan

On Tuesday, Pima County Superior Court in Arizona will hear a case involving a fugitive from justice and the request for extradition to Miami-Dade County, in Florida. The fugitive, a former New York attorney, is a 64-year-old woman named Barbara Stone.

Stone was originally arrested for feeding her mother.

Barbara Stane and her mom, Barbara surprised her mom, with a party

Yes, you read that correctly. Specifically, the 2013 charges against Stone were launched after she took her mother, who was under a guardianship with a “professional guardian” named Jacqueline Hertz, to lunch. Stone had visited her mother, Helen Stone, in the facility wherein Hertz had placed her. Finding her mother on a feeding tube and clearly emaciated, Barbara Stone took her to Denny’s.

She was arrested the same day and charged with the following: 1) Custody interference; 2) Elder abuse; 3) False imprisonment, and 4) Violation of a protective order. According to Miami-Dade, there was no action taken on charges 2-4 and the threat of the five-year prison term attached to the first count was enough for Stone to take a plea. She was sentenced to three years probation.

The warrant for her arrest in Arizona, which was executed on June 16, 2017, states that she violated the terms of her probation on four counts. Three of them reveal a virtual gag on Stone.

1) Barbara Stone is charged with “failing to comply with the plea agreement…..(stating that Stone) shall not file any documents in the pending guardianship case, or in any other court of competent jurisdiction, concerning her mother or any other parties/participants unless said documents are filed by and through an attorney licensed to practice in the State of Florida, and as grounds for belief that the offender violated her probation, Officer Nakesha Tucker states that the offender submitted a letter to Linda Kearon, General Counsel, on August 27, 2016.”

2) As to the second count, “Officer Nakesha Tucker states that the offender submitted an email to Liz Consuegra, attorney ad litem on August 30, 2016.”

Got it. Letters and emails….it gets worse.

3) On the next count of probation violation, Stone is charged again with violating the plea agreement. This time, “Officer Nakesha Tucker states that the offender submitted a blog/review on September 9, 2016.”

Emailing, Blogging…..all of which surrounds the crime of taking her Mom to lunch.

4) On the final count of probation violation, Officer Tucker states that “the offender failed to report (to her probation officer) as directed since August 2, 2016.”

According to friend and neighbor Janet Pipes, at that point Barbara Stone was in Arizona, trying to rebuild her shattered life.

The Stone case was covered in an article in Miami New Times, which discussed multiple cases of guardians preying on and abusing their wards. The article prompted new legislation in Florida, which is generally considered to have been no more useful than a band-aid on brain cancer.

According to Rick Black, intake director for Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianships (AAAPG), new laws have not slowed the pace of fraudulent guardianships across Florida in the least.

His perceptions are echoed by elder law specialists across the country. “We don’t need to change the laws; we need to enthusiastically and effectively apply the laws that we have,” said Sally Hurme, an elder law attorney in Washington, D.C.

Quoted in an article in Next Avenue, A. Frank Johns, a Greensboro, NC. attorney and a national leader in the field of elder law, said: “When you go out and try to look for the application of those changes, it’s nowhere to be found.”

Barbara Stone is not allowed to speak with her mother and reportedly has not seen her in over a year.

It should be noted that none of the documents obtained in pursuit of this report were obtained from the Miami-Dade court. The court’s press officer, Eunice Sigler, has refused to reply to or in any way honor the requests for information filed under the Florida Public Records Act. I suspect the penalties for Sigler’s violating the Florida Public Records Law and the public’s right to know will be negligible.

Eunice Sigler Public Relations Director Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida

After all, we must protect the public at all costs. Not only from daughters who want to feed their mothers but also from reporters who think that something might be rotten in Florida.

According to Rick Black, “The National Center for State Courts estimates there are 1.3 million adults under guardianship.” Black states that at this juncture …” the total assets under guardianship are $50 billion, nationwide.”

Miami-Dade County has recommended six months in jail for Barbara Stone, followed by reinstatement of the probation conditions. Her extradition hearing takes place on June 27, at 2: 30 in Pima County Superior Court, Judge Lee Ann Roads, presiding.

Top Image Caption: Miami-Dade State Attorney General Katherine Fernandez Rundle (D) and Barbara Stone (inset)

Editor’s Note, additional images, and files can be found here, here, here and here

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This article first appeared here at Photography is Not a Crime.

Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and other regional and national publications. Janet specializes in issues pertaining to legal corruption and addresses the heated subject of adult conservatorship, revealing shocking information about the relationships between courts and shady financial consultants. She also covers issues relating to international bioweapons treaties. Her poetry has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in 2005. She is also the author of a tell-all book EXILE, (also available as an ebook). She currently resides abroad.