Review for:
Guardian's Inc, Dirty Money Season III, Episode 5 (Netflix Series)
According to this Esquire article, "Dirty Money's Guardians Inc" is about:
When older or disabled adults are found to be unable to manage their affairs, the state may step in and and assign them a legal guardian to control their finances and medical decision making. It's designed to protect the assets and well-being of those who've lost the ability to make sound decisions for themselves, but it gives those appointed guardians near-total control over those in their care, and can leave elderly people vulnerable to those who don't have their best interest at heart.
Journalist Rachel Aviv, who's featured in the Dirty Money episode, wrote an in-depth examination of guardianship abuse for the New Yorker in 2017.
I have to admit that this is one of the most disturbing documentaries on abuse that I have ever seen.
Cinefalcon said, "Every American should watch “Guardians, Inc. (Dirty Money s2e5)". I would agree.
Abusive guardianships of the elderly have become "the new abuse" and billion dollar money game in American society along with sexual slavery and sexual trafficking of minors (way up), and child abuse (also way up). Apparently, America likes to pick on and take advantage of its most vulnerable citizens, children and the elderly.
This particular egregious abuse is about the elderly.
This episode's "Dirty Money" is about how elder care guardianship has turned into a major fraud racket where the state assigns guardians, one for the elderly person's self and the other for his estate, charging exorbitant fees for visitations (or an icecream cone as the Esquire article states above), while the elderly person's property is being sold off by the other guardian (without the consent of the elderly person). After these guardians take over everything, even throwing away family heirlooms and memorabilia, they then throw the elderly into an assisted care facility in the guise of "protecting the elderly person's welfare".
While they are doing all of this, the court decides the elderly person is incompetent to run his own affairs, much of it done on 10 - 15 minute explanations to a judge, which amount to heresay and a buddy-buddy wink-wink-nod-nod system. They put the elder on much heavier doses of the same medications that this elderly person is already on. Then they often prescribe heavy anti-psychotic medications in addition. Then, because the elderly person is so doped up, he seems unquestionably disabled and incompetent ... which means the elder is stuck with these money-sucking guardians on a quest to enriching themselves while impoverishing their wards for the rest of the wards' lives.
Cinefalcon described the "working parts" of vampire court-ordered guardianships this way:
Abusive guardianship has become a network with many moving parts that all point to the same place – milking money out of the nation’s older adults.
Basically, people are referred to legal counsel who ‘specialize’ in this area. They are often convinced to sign documents they have little to no understanding of, which in turn gives the ‘guardians’ power of attorney. In one of the two cases the episode is built around, an attorney ends up selling a man’s childhood home without his consent. It is eventually demolished and the man has never received a penny of the sale.
In the second case, an estranged family member is put in place as a second guardian. This family member then transfers this guardianship to a politically-connected woman with close to 40 wards already who lies about the man’s safety in the care of his common-law wife in order to arrest him ...
... Many of the experts interviewed in the episode affirm that court-appointed guardians are often chummy with judges. The longest hearings on individual citizens becoming wards of the state last only ten minutes. Some take just thirty seconds. Once you are declared legally incapacitated, it seems there’s very little you can do. There are often phony medical reports written in the first place.
The guardianships real "job" is to look through people in their community who seem alone, without support, without defenses, and to tell the courts that the elder is incapacitated. Some of this comes from attorneys in need of extra cash.
In one case, an elder who lives in Needham, MA, goes to an attorney to get help with warding off the Massachusetts Attorney General for awhile. The Attorney General's office wants the man to put a roof on his house and trim the bushes. Instead, and unknowingly, he signs a document which gives the law firm "Power of Attorney".
The law firm sells off the assets (IRAs, house, car, heirlooms) without the consent of the owner. They bulldoze the house down. Then they go in for the kill and send a psychiatrist to his door to prove he is incompetent. He turns away the psychiatrist, but the psychiatrist gives him an assessment of "incompetent" anyway.
Basically they use his money against him: to take away all of his rights, and what ever property remains. Then they isolate him in the guise of benelovency.
In one section, a judge is touted as inclined to give guardians to elders who don't need it. Just to keep the big business rolling, adding new meat to the grinder?
Elders are forced out of their businesses, businesses that they still run.
In another section, a guardian has four attorneys to keep her safe from litigation.
Some guardians get five percent commission when they sell off an elder's assets in addition to the usual exorbitant fees for unwelcome visits and the vulture-like fake caring and coo-ing.
At the end of the episode, there is the announcement that 1.5 million Americans are under guardianships.
I have written many times about how the nation is becoming narcissistic ... And these kinds of predators would point to a narcissistic nation: exploitative of the vulnerable, lack of compassion, doing damage to another person's life without a backward glance or a care in the world.
These bullies (and they are bullies) band together to take advantage of a system and milk it for all it is worth. And threaten the victims when they get push-back from taking absolutely everything away from these elders except the clothes on their back.
Since all of us are vulnerable children at some point in our lives, and since most of us are elderly, wouldn't it seem to be sinful to take advantage in this way? What's a guardian going to do with her millions of dollars that she stole from her ward? Let the next guardian come in and take it all? You wonder if that's the big revolving piracy plan ...
And as far as something being sinful, how many people care about religion these days and care about sinfulness ... or even integrity? Do we fight the bullies off, or just say, "Not my problem! If he hadn't trusted that lawyer he hired, he wouldn't have been in this mess!" Isn't that the same as blaming a nine year old victim of rape for having a dress that is too short?
Apparently victim blaming does not even end when you are very, very old ...
further reading:
Netflix: Dirty Money (From crippling payday loans to cars that cheat emissions tests, this investigative series exposes brazen acts of corporate greed and corruption) - Netflix's own link to the show
How to help John Savanovich - blog post dedicated to helping John find a way out of his predicament of being a victim of predatory guardianship
HOW TO HELP JOHN SAVANOVICH - facebook post with John's address for his followers to send him cards or to help him (he was the one featured where his "guardian" took his house, sold off his assets and bulldozed it to the ground - from Neeedham, MA)
further reading:
Netflix: Dirty Money (From crippling payday loans to cars that cheat emissions tests, this investigative series exposes brazen acts of corporate greed and corruption) - Netflix's own link to the show
How to help John Savanovich - blog post dedicated to helping John find a way out of his predicament of being a victim of predatory guardianship
HOW TO HELP JOHN SAVANOVICH - facebook post with John's address for his followers to send him cards or to help him (he was the one featured where his "guardian" took his house, sold off his assets and bulldozed it to the ground - from Neeedham, MA)
The Journey of Charlie Thrash - a facebook page dedicated to another victim of predatory "guardianship" featured in the episode
Why Netflix's Dirty Money Is Worth Investing In (It's the Frontline of financial impropriety and that's a good thing) - by Sarah D. Bunting for Primetimer
excerpt:
I'm joking...mostly. I realize that a comparison to the long-running PBS documentary series is a tricky one, because Frontline itself is tricky. My esteemed co-editor-at-large Tara Ariano and I once wrote a piece listing the cheery topics Frontline could find a way to make depressing. A basket of kittens: Full of razor-sharp claws!! A box of crayons: Each one bound to break! I love Frontline; it's well made and informative. Unfortunately, the "informative" part is what often makes the episodes so grim (that, and the subject matter). So why should you make room for another 12 hours of bleakly maddening revelations about corporate corruption, securities shenanigans, and Ponzi scheming in the form of Dirty Money?
Well, Dirty Money is also well made.
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