Valley officials aim to end elderly abuse
WESLACO — Emilia Guzman insisted to the person at her door that she didn’t need home health care services.
Home health workers were going door-to-door through Guzman’s neighborhood to solicit elderly residents, promising a variety of services that would be covered by Medicare, said the woman’s daughter, Marisela Guzman. Despite the 75-year-old’s repeated insistence that she could manage her arthritis on her own, the person at her door persisted until Emilia Guzman asked her daughter to come by the home.
Marisela Guzman arrived at her mother’s house and reported the incident to Senior Medicare Patrol — a U.S. Administration on Aging program that fights Medicare and Medicaid fraud — but she said other seniors could easily be tricked into defrauding the government.
Federal regulators prohibit customer solicitation by Medicaid or Medicare providers who don’t already have a relationship with the patient.
“(My mother) knew that was wrong, but there’s a lot of seniors that don’t know what’s wrong,” Marisela Guzman said. “They don’t know anything and they go for it.”
An elder abuse awareness task force was formed this week at the urging of U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, after repeated instances of abuse, financial exploitation and neglect against seniors in South Texas, said Salomon Torres, Hinojosa’s district director. In recent months, the crimes ranged from a group of women in Weslaco who talked their way into the victims’ homes to steal their purses to a Brownsville man who used a check-writing scheme to defraud seniors of hundreds of dollars.
The task force includes representatives from Rio Grande Valley law enforcement offices, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the Area Agency on Aging, the offices of South Texas lawmakers and several other groups.
It will develop recommendations for policymakers on ways to protect seniors, such as providing for employee training at long-term care facilities. But the task force — which includes local law enforcement agencies and representatives from Adult Protective Services, the state agency responsible for investigating elder abuse — may also create teams that can investigate fraud and crimes against seniors in multiple jurisdictions.
With reported crimes against seniors up 15 percent in the state this year, more attention needs to be focused on ways to protect them from abuse, neglect and exploitation, said Ann Cortez, the regional director for Adult Protective Services. In Hidalgo County alone, her agency opened 235 investigations in May, most of them cases of physical neglect by caretakers or family members.
But many instances of financial exploitation and abuse are often unreported, Cortez said. And in most cases, they’re perpetrated by people who the victims trust the most: family members, friends or caretakers.
“Adults have the right to self-determination,” Cortez said. “They have the ability to make decisions and at the time made the decision to lend the money or sign on the dotted line. It’s very difficult to go back and recoup that money.”
Those sorts of contractual agreements made with undue influence are difficult for law enforcement to pursue as criminal matters, said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez, a member of the task force. That leaves educational efforts to inform seniors of potential fraud as the best way to prevent them from falling for scams that seek their money or their identity.
Leslie Young, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Social Security Administration who will also sit on the task force, said the safest policy for seniors is to stay on guard against predators.
“You’re well within your rights to say no” when someone asks for personal information, she said. “No one can take advantage of you if you don’t let them.”
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Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government, Edinburg and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.
