http://bit.ly/hJ5gzR As the old commercials use to say "we make money the old fashion way, we earn it." I say we toss this couple in their beach house and burn it down. Husband/Wife Smith Barney Advisers Charged With Helping Themselves To Funds Of 81 Year-Old Greenwich Client Who Suffers From Alzheimerâs By Bess Levin If you were a financial adviser hoping to make a name for yourself by ripping off clients, how would you do it? Clients get ripped off on the reg, so itâd have to be something particularly depraved, right? Right. The plan hatched by Paula Halloran, a New Canaan resident previously employed by Smith Barney, and her husband Michael Michelsen was pretty straight forward but it got the job done. Theirs was to steal money from an 81 year-old lady who perhaps wouldâve caught on sooner, had she not had Alzheimerâs and dementia. According to police, the fraudulent activity began in 2005. Funds belonging to the victim were paid to charities, credit companies and other financial institutions, then transferred by Halloran and Michelsen for their own personal use, police said. From April 2006 to November 2008, approximately $765,213 was misappropriated and stolen from the victim, police said. However, the actual amount of money taken was more than $1 million; the statute of limitations only offers a five-year window, preventing roughly a quarter of the million to be included in the report since the activity took place in early 2005, police said. Halloran became the victimâs financial advisor sometime in 2004 but did not begin taking her money until 2005, the report stated. She was able to take advantage of the fact that the victim was not mentally stable and had her write checks for various reasons, including âcharitiesâ and âcredit card companies.â One such âcharityâ supposedly involved something for firefighters; Michelsen is a Wilton firefighter, however, that department was not mentioned by police. Luckily the couple has a legitimate excuse, which is that they needed some cash to cover their âpersonal financesâ which included building a beach house in Block Island.
This is pretty disgusting, but unfortunately not surprising. Money can make monsters out of men (and women!)
This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure it's extremely prevalent albeit the perps aren't so brazen as to rip off over a million dollars. I'm guessing the victim had no children for a Power of Attorney to take over her finances. It's clear we need to bring back some serious type of punishment for these sorts of crimes. Unless we do, I suspect that more predators will view the growing population of retirees as their meal ticket. It is disgraceful.
No. We should take every bit of their property and pay this lady back, if possible up to 150% of what was taken. Otherwise this couple can work the rest of their lives as her personal slaves or earning that money back. I envision something along those lines
By the sound of it, she probably has just a few years left and presumably no heirs either. Nevertheless, we really have to expand the scope of "clawbacks", not just for a situation such as this, but for all sorts of malfeasance wherein the perps knowingly engaged in fraudulent activities. In particular, I believe that there are any number of worthy candidates who played a major part in bringing down the system who remain free to plunder and still have their fortunes of ill gotten gains.