Law Review: Why so many financial crimes against elderly go unpunished

Gladys Willard died at 97, leaving her estate to Emmanuel United Methodist Church of Penns Grove, N.J., where she and her husband, who had passed away a few years before, had long been members.

Her will was a simple document instructing the executor to sell her house and cars and pay whatever bills remained before writing a check to the church.

But when church leaders tried to find out what was left in Willard's estate from her executor, Judith Karr, a local lawyer, they hit a brick wall.

After repeated requests for an accounting got them nowhere, they turned the matter over to a lawyer named John D. Jordan, who had briefly advised Willard a few years earlier and was familiar with her finances. He eventually got a court order forcing Karr to turn over the records.

The first documents formed a skeletal account of expenditures, including $40,000 in legal fees, which he thought was excessive. But Jordan was most struck by how little was left of Willard's assets, which he knew from previous consultations once totaled about a half-million dollars.

It was only after he obtained copies of Willard's tax returns that he finally understood where the money had gone. They showed that Karr had been selling tens of thousands of dollars' worth of Willard's stocks and bonds. But relatively little of that money ended up in Willard's bank account.

That was the beginning of the end for Karr. Jordan went to the Salem County Prosecutor's Office, which launched its own investigation. Karr eventually pleaded guilty to criminal charges stemming from the case and agreed to make restitution to the church.

"I just didn't have any concept that a theft had taken place until I saw the tax returns," said Jordan, of Pennsville, N.J., where he is also a municipal court judge.

Among the lawyers and social-services experts who help elderly clients manage their affairs, what is surprising about cases such as Karr's is not so much that they happen. There is plenty of statistical evidence showing that thefts from isolated elderly victims are commonplace and occur at every socioeconomic level, from the most moneyed neighborhoods of the Main Line to the poorest blocks of North Philadelphia and Camden.