The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) has successfully prosecuted financial crimes in both the Criminal Division and the Fraud Division of the office for many years. Under this approach, the Criminal Division handled most of the small-scale frauds and thefts, while the Fraud Division handled all large-dollar embezzlement cases, together with a wide variety of other complex frauds. Similarly, the Criminal Division has for years handled the prosecution of elder abuse and small-scale elder financial exploitation cases, while the Fraud Division handled large-dollar elder financial abuse cases.
The nature and scope of complex and financial crime have changed in the last few years. In addition to the traditional theft cases that continue to occur, a new pattern of financial crime has emerged that is pernicious and devastating to many individuals and businesses in King County. This new wave of crime is not committed by insiders, employees or caregivers. It is committed by criminals who are taking full advantage of technology, easy credit and other common, but higher tech, methods to steal. The use of technology allows thieves to perpetrate their crimes rapidly and upon a broad section of the community, including the elderly, with whom the criminal has never had any prior contact. It further makes information available to these thieves, which helps them decide whom to target, how to commit the fraud or theft, and when to shift their tactics to avoid detection.
The advent of this new wave of high-tech financial crimes introduces a new complexity to the investigation and prosecution process — even when the amounts stolen are small. To halt the spread of this type of crime, while also continuing to pursue traditional criminal cases, law enforcement and prosecutors must work together in a more comprehensive and coordinated manner. To accomplish this goal, the KCPAO formed the Complex Prosecutions and Investigations (CPI) Division, which is organized into three Units: the Economic Crimes Unit, the Complex Fraud and Abuse Unit, and the Special Operations Unit. The new division, which is comprised of experienced prosecutors from both the Fraud and Criminal divisions, is designed to work with law enforcement to aggressively prosecute criminals committing all types of complex crime.
Reducing Identity Theft
One example of high-tech-aided crime that will be a focus of the CPI Division is identity theft. Today, identity theft is committed by thieves, acting alone or in groups, who take mail, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other forms of personal information from innocent citizens and use that information to steal large sums of money from them. As with many areas of high-tech crime, small numbers of offenders perpetrating identity theft can cause a tremendous amount of damage to large numbers of people in a very short period of time.
To more effectively respond to the wide-ranging scope of identity theft, the KCPAO will consolidate prosecution in the new division. The skill and expertise of the prosecutors in the CPI Division will be a tremendous asset as they work with law enforcement to identify high-impact offenders and aggressively prosecute them.
Curbing Elder Abuse
The CPI Division also will devote itself to combating elder and vulnerable-adult abuse. One to two million Americans aged 65 or older have been abused by someone on whom they depended for care or protection.1 But only one in 14 incidents of abuse is ever reported to the authorities.2 Additionally, only one in 25 cases of elder financial exploitation is ever reported.3
Such statistics and the growing problem of abuse of the elderly and disabled in King County prompted the late Norm Maleng and current Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg to create an elder abuse prosecutor position in 2001. Maleng and Satterberg recognized that because of a lack of information on and understanding of elder-abuse crime, the prosecutor’s duties would be threefold:
- to train law enforcement, medical and social service providers on how to better recognize and respond to such cases;
- to create a forum where members of the various agencies who work in the field could come together to address improvement of the systemic response to the issue; and
- to prosecute select cases of vulnerable-adult abuse and neglect.
In response to this mandate, the elder abuse prosecutor, with the assistance of King County Medical Examiner Dr. Richard Harruff, formed the King County Elder Abuse Council, a multidisciplinary team of professionals, who continue to meet every month to discuss strategies for improving the county’s response to the problem. In addition, in 2004 the office began to sponsor an annual statewide conference to educate and train lawyers, judges, social service providers, healthcare providers, Adult Protective Services (APS) and residential care services workers, and ombudsmen on the subject. At the same time, attorneys in the Fraud Division were becoming increasingly aware of and focused on the prosecution of cases of elder financial exploitation.
Looking Ahead
In the years since, community awareness has increased significantly. Across the country, elder abuse is beginning to be recognized as a growing epidemic that will only worsen. That heightened awareness, along with the exponential growth of the aging population and the limited resources that are devoted to the care of vulnerable adults, has caused significant increases in the number of reported incidents of vulnerable-adult abuse. From 2000 to 2004, the total number of reports of abuse and neglect to APS agencies across the country increased 19.7%.4
The two most common forms of reported elder crimes are financial exploitation and neglect. In 2006 in King County, 2,752 cases of elder abuse were reported to APS. Of those reports, 794 involved financial exploitation and 663 were of alleged neglect.
Neglect cases often involve an element of financial abuse, as well as numerous witnesses, large amounts of discovery, and competency and capacity issues, and frequently require significant medical expertise and/or financial analysis. To address the increase in these crimes and their complexity, Satterberg decided to expand the office’s focus.
He placed the elder abuse prosecutors within the Complex Case Unit in CPI and joined experienced prosecutors from both the Criminal and Fraud divisions to address all types of elder abuse in a more coordinated manner. For the first time, the King County Prosecutor’s Office has a multi-person team whose mission is to handle all cases of financial abuse and neglect of the elderly and disabled in one location.
Through the creation of the CPI Division, Satterberg looks to significantly improve the rate and effectiveness of prosecuting elder abuse and complex financial crimes. The ultimate goal is to hold more offenders accountable for committing these crimes and to lessen the suffering of their victims.
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Kathy Van Olst is chief deputy prosecuting attorney. Page Ulrey heads the prosecutor’s Elder Abuse Project. Both are active in the new Complex Prosecutions and Investigations Division. For more information, please go to www.metrokc.gov/proatty.
1 “Elder Mistreatment: Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation in an Aging America,” National Research Council Panel to Review Risk and Prevalence of Elder Abuse and Neglect, 2003, Washington, D.C.
2 Karl Pillemer and David Finkelhor, 1988, “The Prevalence of Elder Abuse: A Random Sample Survey,” The Gerontologist, 28: 51-57.
3 Wasik, John F., “The Fleecing of America’s Elderly,” Consumers Digest, March/April, 2000.
4 2004 Survey of State Adult Protective Services, funded by Administration on Aging.
