Excerpt from the Court Investigator's Report

So instead of trying to show copies of the Court Investigator's Report on this blog, I'll have a link and anyone can see the redacted copy.

So if you know this site, and have read what is here, this is the story. Mom in law- Carol or Carole was in an assisted living facility in San Jose in 2015. Earlier that year her daughter, Sonya, decided that she could do a better job and with her mom's money got a 3/4 bedroom house in the Branham or Cambrian neighborhood*.  As far as we could tell Sonya then went to fund the life she couldn't afford with her own funds. In 2016 Mike, the son, my husband was pressured into becoming the conservator of his mother, because of his sister's misdeeds.

A Court Investigator was a needed neutral third party who came out to check out what Adult Protective Services was claiming, that there was abuse and that Mike should become the conservator of Carol (Carole). Here are some excerpts from the report with surnames removed.

Case History-Purpose of Report

An ex pane temporary conservatorship of the person and estate of Carol (“Carole”) was approved on May 24, 2016 and letters were issued to her son, Michael (“Michael”),on June 1,2016. According to the petition,a bank made a report to Adult Protective Services (APS) with concerns that Carole’s daughter, Sonya (“Sonya”),had taken approximately $100K out of Carol’s retirement accounts and comingled the money with her personal bank account. APS had concerns that some of the money had been spent in ways that did not benefit Carole. Furthermore, there were concerns that Carole had missed in excess of 20 doctor appointments which were not rescheduled Therefore,conservatorship was needed to provide the protection of Carole’s health and safety as well as her estate.

Living Conditions

Carole was admitted to her current placement from Kaiser Hospital on December 31, 2015. She requires assistance with bathing and shampooing. Her exercise is limited to walking in the backyard with a staff member. Carole ambulates with a wheeled walker. Carole said she received an allowance from Michael, but staff have been unavailable to bring her shopping because of conflict between 2 other residents. Carole said she is in need of shampoo, soap, toothpaste and some summer clothes.
Carole said she asks every day to go out but staff cannot take her. She wants to move and return to Atria,where she had lived previously. Carole called her current placement “the pits,” and said there is nothing to do but watch television.

Involvement of Proposed Conservator

Michael reported that his mother’s financial situation is even more dire than previously thought. He discovered that $10K was withdrawn in April to pay for his sister’s overdue child support. Assets include $20K in one investment account and anon-qualified annuity valued at $158,250. Carole’s teacher retirement is about 3K a month while her board and care is currently costing $3,300. Additionally,Michael is discovering credit card debts.
Just days after the temporary conservatorship was initiated, he also discovered that his mother’s Part D coverage was cancelled on June 1 due to lack of payment. According to Michael,he and his wife paid out-of-pocket to have that coverage reinstated. He has been in contact with his mother’s physician and has scheduled a podiatry appointment for her.

I don't think I need to add more to this post. The Court Investigator pretty much summed up what Sonya did wrong and what Mike has tried to do right.


*I live in DC, I don't know San Jose neighborhoods. I plugged in the address on Calle de Lucia using Google maps and Redfin.

A cruel thought

So a cruel thought crossed my mind.

Sonya was adopted from Korea around the age of two. Now I haven't really made her adoption an issue because we believe in adoption. I don't believe her abusing her mother had much to do with her being adopted. But it does make me wonder if she is a full citizen. Both of the people who adopted her are now dead. One was a little too easy going and the other, Carol would have been the person most likely to have gotten the paperwork in order. So did Carol dot all the i's and cross all the t's for her daughter's adoption?

If not, then is it possible to remove Sonya from the great US of A and send her back to a country where she does not speak or read the language and doesn't respect the culture? That is a crueler sentence than prison.

I wonder this because she doesn't seem to be able to get a checking account, didn't graduate high school, nor has held a normal job. She has also stolen her mother's ID. We know this from getting calls from debt collectors who mentioned an address where we know Sonya lived but Carol never did. So there isn't a lot of evidence in my mind that she is definitely at US citizen.

Maybe she is. Maybe she isn't.

ICE ICE baby

ICE- Immigration & Customs Enforcement

August 2015-Moving Money Around

This post is just about two other accounts on the bank statement that I'd been ignoring. Why did I ignore these? Because there was no movement and not a lot in them. However, in August it appears there is a little money shuffling going on. I'll come back to this thing in 2016, but in August there is some noticeable shuffling.

 So there is something that looks like a savings account, "Share Account Suffix 0". For the past several months there was $25 just sitting in this account minding its own business and then between the 13th and 14th there is a flurry activity. On the 13th $3350.77 is transferred from the main account #9, and then $93.82 from account #2. Maybe that was to cover the $50 Legal Order (Levy/Subpoena) that day. I have my suspicions of what that was about.

During this time, even before this time, Sonya Henry and Rocci were/are (still) in a custody battle regarding Sonya's two minor children, Mike 1 and N Kim. The couple had never married. Also we (Mike & I) had assumed that Sonya had custody of the two children, which would explain why she "needed" a three bedroom house to care for Carol, the woman whose retirement money was funding her lifestyle. Later, in 2016 we discovered she did not have full custody.

Anyway, back to the accounts.

So the next day on the 14th $93.82 is returned to account #2 and $3300.77 is returned to account #9, minus the $50. I have no idea what that is all about and why that was needed. Maybe she was expecting an expense higher than $3K?

 Account #2 is a Money Market account. So the $93.82 that had been sitting in this account was taken out and moved over to account #0, and back over to account #2.

Next post I'll go over account #9 for August 2015.

Maybe it was a sense of entitlement

Why did Sonya financially abuse her mother Carol?

Well she did care for her mother for 10 months and caring for someone with the various ailments along with mobility issues is hard... and probably should be left to the professionals. Sonya was ill suited for the task. To be fair her brother also stinks when it comes to handling finances and we assumed she was just as bad regarding her mother's finances. No, when we finally saw the bank statements, this wasn't a matter of being disorganized or failing to seek out the best price for services (her brother's problem). No this was downright theft. Beyond the theft, she also brought the chaos of her life (the pot smoking, the child custody, the fornication, etc) into her mother's life which probably undermined her health.

As I mentioned, caring for someone is hard and Sonya, with her various faults, was ill suited for the job. Once she realized how hard caring for Carol was she might have had it in her head that she earned or deserved her mother's money. One story she has said is that she (Sonya) sacrificed her career to care for her mother. As far as I can tell, Sonya has never had a stable job. She is a licensed cosmetologist, but doesn't seem to stay at one salon or place for more than a year, if that. She said that she wanted to get her business off the ground so she could support her mother. That's the story. That's the myth. Instead it was an excuse to take more money out of her mother's retirement to pursue a pipe dream. I have a cousin ( a licensed barber) who started in the back room of his rented house doing hair and now (despite being out of it for a couple of years due to an accident) has his own shop in his own building. Sonya seemed to me more talk than real work and action.

So in her head she thought she gave up this great career to be nursemaid. She didn't have to. She could have let her mother stay in the assisted living place ( or find a cheaper one) and visit her since they lived in the same city of San Jose, CA. But no, she couldn't leave well enough alone. She could not let her mother live in peace among other old people.

So what did her mother get for her money? Well she got a rental that was a significant upgrade for her daughter and the house was nicer than the house Carol once owned. She got about six months of what we can only guess as good quality time with her daughter and granddaughter. Then it went downhill. Sonya brought in a live in boyfriend. Sonya scared away the visiting nurse by throwing her 15 year old son, Mike 1, across the room (she has anger management issues). The nurse reported this to Child Protective Services. as she is required to do so when witnessing any sort of abuse. The nurse did not return citing fear. Sometime in late 2015 Carol was on the phone with her son, my husband, Mike and asked to get out of there. In December 2015, Carol extracted herself from the house, and Adult Protective Services got involved. I'll talk about the continued financial elder abuse after Carol and Sonya we no longer living together, but let me get through August-Decemeber 2015 statements first.

So now Carol is dead. Her ashes sit on my bookshelf in a nice wood box. Sonya won't talk to me and has asked her brother not to involve me. Fine. However, Mike did mention that she believes she is entitled to whatever is left. I've reminded him she already stole her inheritance.  She'll be getting about $4000 from CalSTers, her half of the death benefit, as she was named as a beneficiary, and her brother sent her a scan of the paperwork he got from CalSTers. (Me: Facepalm... Mike is too nice of a nice guy) 

July 2015- Driving down the 101 livin' on someone else's money

Well another month of a daughter spending her mother's retirement fund to the ground. Quick recap, Sonya got Power of Attorney (POA) over her mother's finances to "take care" of Carol, the mother. As POA you are SUPPOSED have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the elderly person. Sonya instead used her mother's money and bank accounts as if they were her personal accounts. That was a no-no. I am the sister-in-law and I can't bring charges against Sonya, nor can I seem to convince her brother, my husband and Carol's conservator, to bring charges..... yet. 

Anyway, July the deposits are bigger than the withdrawals. Yay. But a bulk of that are two pension payments from Cal-Sters. Sonya made a few deposits of a couple hundred dollars here and there but they don't cover the purchases and decisions that do not help Carol. Instead of only using Carol's money for Carol only, as she is supposed to as the POA, Sonya went to bars, had lunch, leased a luxury vehicle, gassed up that vehicle and funded the middle class lifestyle Sonya seemed to think she was entitled to, without producing the middle class income (or being married to someone with a middle class income).

You can click on the images to blow them up. So on the first page there are two big expenses that pop out at me. On July 6th there is a $503.97 charge for Comcast and on July 9th $587.55 for a lease. In my previous post, I mentioned the check payments to Fremont GMC or whatever for vehicle expenses for a woman who does not drive. I believe in the Santa Clara County inspector's report (I need to find that, it's somewhere in my husband's office), Sonya claimed that she needed a vehicle to drive her mother around. Huh. when we visited in early 2015, Sonya had a vehicle, an SUV. There is no logical reason why she would need a new (I believe the report said...) Cadillac. Momma can be transported to the doctor's appointments just as well in a Corolla. And then there is the insurance, 7/10/15 $147.80 for Mercury Casualty.

Page 2 part 2 below.

 
More purchases, some charges, like CMS Medicare, and possibly Walgreen's maybe part of Safeway seem to be for Carol, but the dining out, the lunch places like Crepevine in Willow Glen where Sonya worked, those were for Sonya, not for Carol.

 On page three I see three charges from Boba Pub. I also see $101.98 from IYOGI some overseas tech support of questionable worth. Carol isn't a tech savvy grandma. I suspect this is Sonya or Sonya allowing Mike1 to use his grandma's money. I don't blame the teenage son, kids don't know how households work.

So in summary, Sonya was probably driving down the CA-101 in a car, living the life she wants on her momma's money. But isn't she caring for her mother? Yes, she supposedly was caring for her, but discovered it was hard work, and maybe that's why she thought she could get compensated by using her mother's bank account.

Next, August.

June 2015- Still taking out more than she puts in

At some point I'll post a Facebook messenger exchange I had with Sonya where she asked me if I was trying to have her arrested. I told her that I couldn't have her arrested, but her brother could. I just need to convince him to file charges and despite words to the contrary (sigh) he hasn't done so. So this and the other posts are me laying out what wrong Sonya did to their mother so maybe, just maybe, if I catch him at just the right moment, I can convince him to file charges against his sister.

Okay, so June.

June saw 57 withdrawals of $7,554.68 and 3 deposits of 4691.76. Two of those deposits came from Carol, the elderly victim, and one from Sonya.

Now as a reminder to those of you playing at home, as the POA Sonya was not supposed to mix her expenses with her mother's, however that was the first thing she did. So June is like the other months where she spent her mother's money on herself and her wants.

So looking at the list of checks, check #2519 jumps out at me. Now the place where they are living, the rent was paid 6 months in advance, so what is this check for $3000 for? Well, some time back I got Mike (the son and conservator) to request from the bank a few copies of checks. But since checks are like a quarter a pop, I had to pick and choose. I chose this one and it is for Fremont GMC - Cadillac, written on May 7, 2015, signed by someone who does not have Parkinson's. Now I haven't owned a car in decades, and the family car was bought used, bought off Carol by Mike, and currently has over 130K miles on it. So we have no idea how buying a car works theses days, what we do know is that Sonya did lease a Cadillac saying it was for mom! Seriously?

Okay lets get to the month.

Let's start with Carol's pension as a deposit, followed by a $520.83 shopping trip to Wal-Mart and some gas from a Chevron station. Next we get a deposit of $1240, probably from Sonya, so she can convince herself she's not blowing away all her mother's money. I remember she would tell her brother that she was contributing to mom's care. HA! It is difficult to believe that these purchases are for Carol's (mom's) care, since they do no reflect spending patterns prior to Sonya getting access to the account, nor the time when her brother Mike became conservator. Mike has a stable job and his own bank accounts and doesn't need to steal money from their mother.

The deposit is followed by an $60 cash withdrawal, and some more constant shopping, dining and other purchases. The AGI*TMO INS Deductible caught my eye as maybe this was some odd insurance for Carol, the 70/71 year old diabetic with Parkinson's. Nope it is cell phone insurance.

Going to the next page, there is more insurance. The June 8th United Healthcare is possibly for Carol, maybe a left over for her deceased husband of $20.98. Then there is a $230.88 charge from Mercury Insurance..... I'm betting that's car insurance. Carol don't drive.

Instead of pointing out all the charges and purchases that were not likely for Carol, such as the fast food, restaurant, 7-11 (this place appears often), and gas purchases, let's look at what might be for Carol and why. Walgreen's has a pharmacy, so maybe that was for Carol, but then again, Walgreen's and CVS, which appears sells quickie mart things too like 7-11. Besides, it would have been better to buy Carol's drugs from Kaiser, where she was a member. All you can get from Kaiser is health care and energy bars. Bummer.

So more of the same, but wait, what is this June 23rd charge I see?

It's for something called The Little Gym. Well is Carol getting the physical therapy and exercise she needs? No! This is a children's playground, not something for a frail old woman.

Well at least Medicare got paid. But that seems like an automatic payment, and nothing that Sonya had to do.