Summary
In the final installment of this powerful three-part series, Chip Wallace shares the shocking discoveries he made after his mother's death, uncovering evidence of financial exploitation, missing assets, and systemic failures that left his family searching for answers. As Chip retraces years of questionable decisions and financial transactions, he reveals how vulnerable older adults can become targets for abuse—even when professionals and institutions are involved. This episode offers important lessons about recognizing warning signs, maintaining oversight of caregiving arrangements, and taking proactive steps to protect aging loved ones from financial exploitation.
Key Questions Answered
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What prompted Chip to investigate his mother's finances after her death?
The discovery of a new will, a large annuity benefiting a caregiver, and missing personal belongings raised serious concerns about potential exploitation.
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What evidence suggested financial abuse may have occurred?
Chip uncovered unusually high caregiver payments, missing valuables, unauthorized credit card activity, and records pointing to questionable financial decisions.
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Why was it difficult for the family to intervene earlier?
Distance, limited legal authority, and reliance on trusted professionals made it challenging to identify and stop potential abuse in real time.
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What did Chip learn about reporting suspected elder abuse?
Families do not need definitive proof to raise concerns with Adult Protective Services—suspicions alone can warrant an investigation.
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What is the biggest lesson for families caring for aging loved ones?
Stay actively involved, maintain oversight of caregiving and financial arrangements, and have important conversations about future care plans before a crisis occurs.
Transcript
Brandy Archie
Hey everybody, welcome back to the CareLab podcast. We are in the middle or at the end, I should say, of a three-part series with Chip Wallace. If you have not heard episodes one and two of this series, you can't keep going. You need to go back and listen to the whole story so you can know what we're gonna talk about today because he has just been explaining to us the financial abuse that his mother experienced and how we got there, even though...
There were people in her life. so today we're going to start where we ended in our last episode. And I want to ask, when we get to 2022 and, what do you take from all this? some, and you, gave us the details of the story, but I'm assuming that some of those details you didn't know in real time, you then found out later, right? And like went back and try to piece it together. So talk to us a little bit about.
⁓ One, why it was important to go back and piece it together and like how you came about doing it.
Charles Wallace
Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, no, it's when my mother passed in early March of 22. And when we went down to go basically take care of her place, she had been moved into assisted living in the summer of 21. And while we're down there, we're talking to the CPA and he gives us a ⁓ paper that shows what's gonna be in probate and what's outside of probate. And that's when I discovered that there had been a new will executed in January of 20.
And also there was an annuity that was for the caregiver as well that had been executed in the spring of 2019, about two months before we were kicked off the medical power of attorney. But right when we were told that she didn't have capacity to make financial decisions. So the caregiver is lined up for half a million dollars essentially. Three through probate and the 250 through the annuity. And.
When I looked, we tried to get a hold of the caregiver on the phone and she wouldn't answer our phones. When we watched the CPA caller, she answered within two rings. And so we didn't, we never talked to her again. but from there, I started looking into what was going on because I was expecting when she moved out of that condo that had flooded, it was about 2300 square feet. And so there should have been stuff in storage somewhere and found out that
everything had been sent to charities or given away. So the only thing left of 2300 square foot was a few things that were in her small apartment, the assisted living, and then a few things that were left in the storage unit that was about the size of a broom closet.
all the boxes that should have had all the photo memories, all the photo albums, all the eight millimeter film of when my sister and I were growing up, roller skating back in when you used to put pillows on your backside so you didn't hurt yourself when you were little. All those kinds of things were gone. ⁓ I had seen them back in 2017. I thought, well, there's no rush. I'll just get those when time comes, figure it'll be in a few years.
I'll digitize them when I get them. Well, all that stuff is gone. And I get, I ask the CPA, give me the receipts from the charity that you guys donated it to. So I get the receipts the next day and I can't verify one of the charities. No email response, no phone number response. There's an address that's in South Dallas, just below the city. And I go on Google Maps and do a little road trip around there. The front of the building's boarded up.
⁓ and found the owner that was supposedly this organization had.
15 years earlier had gotten in trouble because of a knit with another charity because she had signed up her daughter and they had scammed a bunch of money through that process. And so I'm thinking, okay, well that obviously was a scam. So where did what happened? And so I started nosing around there in May and was able to get into my mother's broker account ⁓ and started looking around what was going on and realized this woman was getting paid a crazy amount of money.
she had no credentials, she just walked around in scrubs all the time with a name tag. Found out eventually that they were paying her 30 bucks an hour and they would pay her for a full day at 30 bucks an hour even sleeping. And so she grossed over three years 300 grand roughly a year. So we're getting close to a million dollars over a four-year period. They had gotten to that price because they'd got a notice from
Another ⁓ caregiver agency that said, yeah, we usually charge 25 bucks an hour for that type of service. And they said, OK, we'll do that. Except that was a business. That was a true business where they had overhead. You had insurance and things like that to cover. This was just her, but they gave it to her anyway. And so she had a good amount of money.
And then I noticed, for example, that they had had a jewelry appraisal check. So I was able to get the receipt of that and found out what had happened and discovered that a third of that jewelry was gone. And then I asked the CPA, this ended March, so we're just a couple of weeks after she passed, can you run a credit report on her? I want to see if there's anything else that may have happened. Well,
He said, well, you know, it's tax time. I'll get to it. So he never does. But instead of waiting a few days, I went in on my mother's phone and she had LifeLock and you can get credit reports through LifeLock. So I ran that and discovered a new credit card that was on there. My mother's name that was being used and it was by a store that was outside of town and called them. Banks and financial places don't like the word fraud.
So I used that a bit and was able to get to a department, discovered where all the shopping on that cart had been going on. And it was about 15 minutes south of the caregiver's house. But the woman was paying the bill, but just enough so collections would never call. And so the bills would come to my mother's place. The caregiver would pull the bill out, give the other bills to the CPA to pay, and then she would pay a portion of it each month just to keep it going.
Emilia Bourland
So the CPA wasn't aware that it was there then.
Charles Wallace
He didn't know the bill at all, but the last bill, because she didn't pay the last bill, when he got it, he paid it. So when I called the credit card company back, they said, we don't have any issues. The bills have been paid. I said, but it was identity theft. We don't have the bill was paid. We don't we don't care, basically. So I go on. So I get at this point, this is we're now early March. I'm we're contesting. I'm contesting the will and the attorney tells me the process of how to contest the annuity. So I go through that process and by June 15th of 22, I were able to block the annuity payment. So even though it was outside of probate, the woman's not getting this money right now. It's going to court, it's going through the interim pleader process. What I didn't know until July is seven days later, the woman died, the caregiver. Yeah.
Brandy Archie
That's a twist I wasn't expecting.
Emilia Bourland
Same.
Charles Wallace
Yeah.
So the caregiver, and I found this out through getting into her Yahoo account, I was able to get 6,000 emails from her Yahoo account about two years later. Because of COVID, the Approbate Corps was backed up by about a year. And if it hadn't have been backed up, I wouldn't have found all this other information that I found over the next year and a half or so. But I was going through, her emails because they... one of the therapists was emailing her directly to talk about treatment. Well, I'm sorry, that's a HIPAA problem. And you're using Yahoo, now we've got a second HIPAA problem. So that was our approach. And so we were able to go get her email based on keywords and that's where I got 6,000. And it went all the way back to 09, so it was before my mother's time. And that's when I found out about the prior victim. So in 09...
Emilia Bourland
Wait, wait, wait. So
you're in the caregiver's email. I thought for some reason, I thought that you had been in your mom's email, but you actually got into the caregiver's email.
Charles Wallace
I got it. I got an air gear's email based on about 20 keywords, phrases and phrases. And so I got, they sent the attorney for the caregiver's estate, sent her account link to a third party group that would pull the emails based on the keywords we used. And so I got those, went through it and quickly found the prior incident where she had been working for it.
a senior source group and they fired her because of inappropriate use of client data. And so that's in January. And so she writes a response letter, which was in her email. And in it, she brags about having a relationship with the client. We have more than just a working relationship, she brags. She goes back after that, so that's January of the ninth, and starts working for the guy directly.
begins getting access to his credit cards. The attorney for him gives her that. And in 2011, she marries him. And that's January. And in April of 2011, he passes and she gets his house and his accounts, essentially. And it totaled probably about a half a million dollars. And so my mother was the next big victim. part of me, I had found a little bit of this because I found the obituary from that point in time.
but I didn't find it until like April of 22. And so that's when I had an idea something else was going on.
Emilia Bourland
Okay, okay, you have done a lot of smoothing here. Did you ever though, like as part of this process, did you contact the authorities? Did you call the police? Like did, and if you did, what could they or couldn't they do?
Charles Wallace
Mm-hmm.
Oh, that's
the fun part because I was not the power of attorney for my mother, the CPA was, and he believed nothing really wrong was going on. I didn't have the authority to press charges because I was a third party, essentially, even though it was my mother. So all I could do was file like a loss report on that jewelry, for example.
Emilia Bourland
Mm.
Charles Wallace
But I had no other information that we could pursue. didn't. And then at the time, I wasn't aware of the elder abuse department in the DA's office, for example. And as this was going on back in 2019, we weren't aware that for adult protective services, you don't have to prove it. You just have to think something maybe is going on. And so we didn't understand that at all. Right.
Brandy Archie
Hmm.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, you can just call and say, we think something is wrong.
Brandy Archie
Yeah.
Charles Wallace
And
so we don't understand. Now, Adult Protective Services had visited them based on another issue that had come in. And it was interesting, there were four banks involved, two of the banks called Protective Services and two of them didn't. But all four had reasons to do it. So that was one thing that came up that was kind of interesting. So if you think all your banks are protecting you, you might wanna double check.
Brandy Archie
What do feel like is the takeaway that people should have having heard your experience? Why was it important to write the book? What should people know?
Charles Wallace
Yeah, so it's
well, one of the things I we, you know, it just made me mad because I was like, this is nuts because how did you let this happen? You had these people watching and essentially it's long distance. So the first thing was if you when you have somebody relative that and they need care, you need to be the one to hire and don't let the person who needs the care be the one that's hiring them. Because if you do, you can't fire them.
Like I would have fired that woman right off when she wouldn't provide receipts. That would have been it. You're done. We're going to go hire somebody else. And I couldn't. And not being in town made it a challenge. And because those other folks were getting paid by my mother, I couldn't stop it. The only thing I could have done was physically be in there and I wasn't able to do it because of where I lived and what I was doing as far as work.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Charles Wallace
⁓ but you know, I, I've been kind of saying to folks, you know, can't outsource trust, but you know, what's the other option? She refused to move up where we lived. She refused to move where my sister lived. So we were kind of stuck and thought, well, where she's at, she knows people and they got her out of where she was at. And it just got, you know, kind of went radio silent, even though we would talk to her randomly.
Brandy Archie
Mm-hmm.
Charles Wallace
But then I know it's hard and there's not an easy answer. ⁓ The best thing is to have conversations beforehand. I had talked to her about going to assisted living in early 2018. She went to her friend's place, the one that she put on the medical power attorney and said, here's.
Brandy Archie
Mm-hmm.
Charles Wallace
Two bedroom apartment, enough room for you. And we got back after looking at it and she's like, well, what here can I take with me? And I said, you can't take the stuff in this room. So there's not enough space. And she's like, then I just won't leave. I'll just stay here, which is what we'd always thought would happen. But they got her out and eventually the caregiver put her in assisted living ⁓ in the summer of 21.
Emilia Bourland
Well, this is a pretty crazy story. If people want to, and of course, this has been, you know, we've really probably only scratched the surface during the course of the series. If people want to hear the whole story, read the whole book, what is the name of your book and where can they find that?
Charles Wallace
Sure,
it's the caregivers game. It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Also the website is the caregivers game. There's some more information there, some other links you can look at. But that's the main piece. I've got it out there. Folks are looking at it and the response has been really, really, really positive. It's everywhere from, that caregiver is really, really evil to...
I just, you know, I can't believe all the things they did. ⁓ When you look at what's in there, I've got stories in there of, you know, a second doctor's note, which allowed the will, the second will to be done and how the attorney researched adult protective service, not practice services, I'm sorry, financial ex- ex- exploitation, but still did it anyway. ⁓ And it's, it's just nuts. Everything you would think could go wrong did as far as protecting.
Brandy Archie
did.
Emilia Bourland
Well, you know, I think I can speak for both Brandy and I when we say like, we're so sorry that this happened. We also recognize though that this is unfortunately something that can and does happen to vulnerable populations on a regular basis, that financial exploitation is a real problem amongst our elderly.
Brandy Archie
Yeah.
Charles Wallace
Thank you.
Emilia Bourland
⁓ I guarantee you there are people listening to this right now who have their own incredibly ⁓ difficult and complicated stories of financial exploitation amongst their loved ones. ⁓ Thank you so much for being on and sharing this story and sharing your experience with everyone to help make more people aware of the fact that this is ⁓ both a crime and a real problem. ⁓
Thank you so much for being on this special series on financial exploitation for CareLab. We appreciate you being here, Chip.
Charles Wallace
Thank you very much.
Emilia Bourland
If you made it to the end, if you made it to the end of this episode, please make sure first of all, that you listen to the other episodes in this series. And second of all, make sure to like, follow, subscribe and share this so that you can get the most update information about when we drop our next episode right here on CareLab. We'll see you back here next time. Bye.
Brandy Archie
Bye everybody.
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