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Pair of So-Called Paralegals Preys on the Elderly

By Lynne DeVenny

It's hard to spend your final days in a nursing home. Visitors remind you that someone still cares about you, and provide a link to the outside world. They help you do the things you can no longer do for yourself. But some visitors apparently view nursing home residents as sitting ducks, ripe for financial scams.

A pair of so-called paralegals, calling their unregistered business Estate Planning Paralegal Services in Dublin, Ohio, but not working under the supervision of lawyers, are being sued by Ohio's Attorney General for violations of the state Consumer Sales Practices Act and of the Home Solicitation Sales Act. Andrea and George West, currently residing in New Mexico, allegedly called themselves "Medicaid Specialists" and operated a Medicaid assistance scheme which cost their victims thousands of dollars.

Medicaid is a U.S. health program for people with low incomes and few assets. Add the fact that these were senior citizens unable to live independently, and this reaches a new level of heinous behavior.

Attorney General Richard Cordray said, "They targeted residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities around the state, promising to help the residents apply for Medicaid. Although the Wests received thousands of dollars in payment, they never delivered the promised services."

If the allegations are true, and in a just world, we reap what we sow, the Wests would not only be ordered to pay restitution and civil penalties, but they would spend their final days in a nursing home, helpless and penniless, at the mercy of anyone who walks in the door hoping to take advantage of their desperate need.

It's situations like this one that bolster the argument for mandatory regulation or licensing of paralegals.

Sources: Columbus Business First; Legal News Line

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).