How Illinois’ safety net to protect the elderly from financial exploitation is falling short

For much of his long life, Paul Borik kept busy in the service of others.

As a young soldier in the aftermath of World War II, he helped rebuild France. Then he returned to Chicago, where he dedicated his time and money to his older brother, whose head was pierced by a metal fragment in the war.

During long work days, he tended to the flowers and towering palms at the Garfield Park Conservatory as a Chicago Park District horticulturist.

To help his family, he sacrificed his dream of opening an evergreen nursery in Michigan. Instead, he stayed in the same Northwest Side bungalow where he grew up, never marrying, watching over his aging parents and disabled brother until their deaths left him alone.

During a visit in 2012, when Borik was 80, a state-contracted social worker found a portable heater beside his easy chair amid thigh-deep piles of food cartons and trash. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. Leaves that sprouted from small pots on a living room windowsill were the only vestige of a once-orderly life and career.

A social worker described his house as “unlivable” and its lonely inhabitant as “a magnet for people running a con game.”

He needed help.

Yet records show that, for the next five years, state officials filed report after report but never intervened as Borik was swindled again and again, losing more than $340,000 in all — the bulk of his life savings.

The safety net designed to protect thousands of older Illinoisans like Borik didn’t protect him, an Injustice Watch investigation has found.

State officials say Borik refused their offers of help and that is his and every citizen’s right to do so.

In a four-month investigation, Injustice Watch examined dozens of cases like Borik’s in which predators took advantage of old people and defrauded them of savings they were counting on.

In Illinois, the system designed to protect the elderly from financial exploitation is failing, the investigation found. And that’s happening as what’s been called a “silver tsunami” of aging baby boomers increasingly find themselves living alone, without the support of family nearby.

The number of elderly people in Illinois victimized by financial abuse is at an all-time high. In all, Illinois seniors were swindled out of a record $75.9 million last year, up from $5 million in 2014, according to FBI reports. Because such crimes often go unreported, experts said that figure is likely to be a vast undercount.

Yet the numbers of arrests and prosecutions for elder financial abuse are falling.

Illinois ranks 49th among states in the number of suspicious banking transactions per capita reported against older adults by financial institutions, according to an Injustice Watch analysis of federal data.

Yet Illinois is among a minority of states without its own investigators to look into elder financial abuse, saving money by instead contracting with about 40 social service agencies for that work. 

Caseworkers often are confused about their authority and their mission, records and interviews show. In an interview, the Illinois Department of Aging’s top Adult Protective Services official mischaracterized his own agency’s responsibilities, saying APS is barred by state law from investigating fraud by financial professionals, criminals or strangers such as those who victimized Borik. 

“We don’t do fraud,” said Brian Pastor, who was named manager of Illinois APS in 2021.

Officials later backed off of Pastor’s interpretation of the law.

Injustice Watch found that limits in banking regulations, loose state watchdog laws and cost-cutting at almost every level of government have played roles in hampering efforts to protect the state’s elderly.

“None of the systems meant to protect elders are working effectively,” said Paige Fox, a Chicago lawyer who is president-elect of the Illinois Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. “Seniors are easy targets because our society doesn’t care about them. They’re looked at as disposable. They’re easy money.”

Pastor called Illinois’ plummeting numbers of verified cases of elder financial abuse a “fluctuation.” And he says his office cannot intervene when people decline help, regardless of their age or infirmity.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker declined an interview request. In a written statement, his spokesman said: “The Adult Protective Services program works around the clock to investigate this abuse, keep seniors safe and ensure law enforcement can hold bad actors accountable when appropriate … These provider agencies are experts in their communities and local dynamics.”

Sebastián Hidalgo / Injustice Watch

Chicago man targeted at 80

Predators first targeted Borik in 2012.

A 27-year-old woman named Pebbles Miller approached Borik, then 80, as he gassed up his car two miles from his home, records show.

She seemed friendly. She said she was an interior designer and was in the neighborhood shopping for light fixtures. She invited him to coffee. 

As a flirtation developed over weeks, Miller told her new friend she had cancer and could not afford treatment.

Over the next five years, she and a loose network of accomplices fleeced the increasingly confused Borik through four separate cons, home-repair frauds and sweetheart scams, according to a review of court cases.

He lost the house his family owned for more than seven decades, the bulk of his retirement savings and his liberty.

Now 91 and living in a seniors facility in the northwest suburbs as a ward of the state, Borik struggled in interviews to recount what happened.

“They seem to find me very easily,” he said. “You wonder if it wasn’t a pattern of sorts.”

Sebastián Hidalgo / Injustice Watch

Officials with the $1 billion-a-year Illinois Department on Aging and its Adult Protective Services program, established by state law a decade ago as the frontline agency to protect elderly and disabled adults, filed detailed reports each time Borik was fleeced.

He triggered its involvement when he contacted one of its contracted investigative agencies, Catholic Charities, asking for help paying Miller’s medical bills.

Miller ended up being convicted of felony theft. She spent 20 months in state prison. But only a fraction of the $98,000 Borik gave her was recovered, court records show.

And the swindlers kept coming.

After another woman befriended Borik at a grocery store and eventually made off with $162,455 in 2015, a Catholic Charities caseworker called the same Chicago police detective who handled the first case

“He was not interested in getting involved this time because Borik obviously did not learn a lesson,” according to APS reports.

In 2013, when state officials were investigating Borik’s first case, it was one of 6,744 reports of elder financial exploitation handled by APS. By last year, that number had risen to 8,410.

Pastor defended his program’s record and said state-contracted investigators face a moral choice when the protection of an older adult could come at the cost of that person’s liberty, privacy and free will — their fundamental right to live as they want even if they make calamitous financial choices.

“It’s always about asking them what they feel is appropriate, asking them what they feel comfortable with,” Pastor said. “We always ask for consent to do things. That’s the primary piece. That’s all we always have to go off of.

“Oftentimes, that might mean the client refuses to do an investigation on their family member or on someone they care about,” Pastor said. “That’s their choice, and we have to respect that.”

Preserving the liberty of older adults is a priority for every layer of government, but APS is not doing that effectively, said Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert.

“At some point, Adult Protective Services has to step in and protect,” Golbert said.

Sebastián Hidalgo / Injustice Watch

He runs the government agency of last resort in such cases. His office can ask a probate court judge to give the public guardian the right to take over the finances of people who don’t have the ability to care for themselves and who have no family to do that. The public guardian handles the estates of more than 700 disabled adults — including Paul Borik. 

“You want to talk about taking liberty away?” Golbert said. “When you take away somebody’s life savings, you are taking away options and choices and liberty for them.” 

He said such lost savings might have kept older people in their own homes, with support, or allowed them to move to a four-star nursing home — “that takes money,” Golbert said — instead of a “substandard facility.”

“Every time you hear about one of these cases you will see chinks in the armor where things should have been done differently,” said Diane Slezak, chief executive officer of AgeOptions, one of 13 Area Administrations on Aging that help APS investigate financial abuse of older adults. “It’s a systems problem.”

A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic Charities would not address specific cases, citing confidentiality.

“We will continue to strive to meet those needs with care and compassion,” she said.

Other states do more

Illinois is among half a dozen states in which investigations of abuse of older adults are contracted to social services agencies, according to Bill Benson of the National Adult Protective Services Association, which represents state and local APS administrators and workers. 

In most states, reports of elder financial exploitation are handled by government employees. Arizona’s in-house APS staff includes forensic accountants and investigators with law enforcement backgrounds.

The Illinois contractors — mostly nonprofit social services agencies — are paid hourly rates to investigate and verify financial abuse complaints from bank officials, relatives, landlords and victims themselves. 

Of 8,410 reports of financial exploitation last year, the state-contracted caseworkers verified evidence of abuse in just 462, about 5.5%, down from about 19% of cases a decade ago. This plunge in APS-verified cases helps explain the decline in arrests and prosecutions for elder financial abuse in Chicago and Cook County. 

Records show APS referred only 40 cases last year to law enforcement statewide — fewer than 1% of the reports it got. APS would not say how many cases were referred to the Chicago Police Department.

Chicago police reports on elder financial exploitation since 2001 show the number of arrests dropping steadily. 

Officials with Chicago Police Department and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration did not respond to requests for comment.

According to data from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, prosecutors are filing fewer cases and getting guilty verdicts against fewer defendants than a decade ago.

On his agency’s website, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul proclaims that one of his office’s most important responsibilities is protecting older people from financial exploitation and “taking legal action against those who prey on older residents.” But when asked for a list of recent legal actions or even statistical data about them, the office said it did not track cases specifically targeting seniors. 

Adult protection experts said Illinois lacks APS investigators with the financial skills to safeguard vulnerable people.

The state-contracted social workers “are overloaded and undertrained ... and their caseloads overwhelm them,” said Dr. XinQi Dong, a health epidemiologist and geriatrician whose staff at Rush University interviewed more than 3,000 Chicagoans for a 2016 study on the underreporting of elder financial abuse in immigrant communities. Dong also has advised the Illinois Department on Aging and lawmakers.

John K. Holton, who directed the Department on Aging from 2011 to 2015, when Illinois’ current Adult Protective Services Act was written, said the system to hire outside investigations was designed to empower senior services organizations and to contain costs.

“It was easier to get legislation putting in place Adult Protective Services with a delivery mechanism that didn’t add to the state payroll and increase the pension liabilities of state employees, versus subcontractors being responsible for the salaries and benefits,” Holton said.

Illinois ranks near the bottom of states in the per-capita number of “suspicious activity reports” about elder financial abuse filed with the U.S. Treasury Department.

Illinois isn’t among the 39 states to supply case-level information to the National Adult Maltreatment Reporting System, a federal data repository designed to spot abuse trends. It also isn’t among the 26 states in which financial institutions are required to notify state authorities when the accounts of older or disabled people show unusual activity. And it is not among the 34 states that mandate reporting of the cases to state securities regulators and the APS program.

In May, after a decade of efforts by elder justice advocates, the Illinois General Assembly passed a law mandating reporting for one category of professionals: investment advisers.

Declining enforcement

The situation in Illinois is emblematic of a national crisis. The reported amount lost to financial exploitation of older adults nationwide rose to $3.1 billion last year – a ninefold increase from $342.5 million in 2017, according to FBI data. Financial exploitation is the most common form of elder abuse in the United States, according to a publication by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Treasury Department.

The largest number of known abusers are relatives who have easy access to the victim’s account information, government records and research studies show. But the largest dollar amounts are lost to financial professionals and experienced criminals — like the ones who exploited Paul Borik.

“While the largest number of cases reported involved family, friends and caregivers, the aggregate dollar amounts lost through commercial elder abuse was the highest,” a 2011 MetLife study reported.

The confidence scams such as those that targeted Borik — typically run by criminals who pose as home repairmen or sweethearts — took 4,661 victims older than 60 last year nationwide, up from 583 in 2017, a sevenfold increase, according to FBI data. 

There also are tech-savvy scamsters who use high-pressure telephone and Internet solicitations — including voice-cloning software to mimic grandchildren.

The nationwide rise in elder financial exploitation is driven in large part by demographics. The United States has a growing number of older adults with no relatives living close by and no immediate support network, according to census data and research studies.

In 2018, about 40% of Illinois residents 60 or older lived alone, a figure that’s expected to grow as the number of older adults rises.

Sebastián Hidalgo / Injustice Watch

‘Of his own free will’

Paul Borik said his fascination with plants began in childhood when he discovered snapdragons spilling over a neighbor’s fence. As a child in the 1930s, he delivered flowers to Chicago hospitals by streetcar or on foot and then, as a teenager, worked for nurseries.

Borik got a horticulture degree from the University of Illinois. But events pushed him into a new primary role — physically helping and financially supporting his aging parents and brother John Borik Jr., disabled in WWII. 

“I tried to help in what ways I could,” Borik said. “I tried to take care of my family and Johnny.” 

“Paul is such a good man with such a giant heart that I can see where it would be possible for people to take advantage of him,” Borik’s cousin Jo Otiepka said.

Borik’s memories dissolve when asked about the scams that plunged him into a nursing home. The following account is based on APS and court records.

Those who targeted Borik came from a loose network of at least 40 people convicted together of felonies against seniors or who lived at the same addresses as they carried out cons against elderly victims in Illinois and elsewhere, according to a review of more than 100 Cook County cases.

In what’s listed as Case A, for which Pebbles Miller served prison time for felony theft, state-contracted APS investigators visited Borik’s house and immediately reported the matter to police.

“Worker went around to back yard which was so overgrown with plant and tree branches that worker could not walk in it,” a Catholic Charities caseworker reported to APS.

A year and half later — in June 2013 — Catholic Charities closed its file on Borik, saying in its final report that he “does not believe he will ever see any of his money again but he will get along.”

In January 2014, Borik was taken to Swedish Hospital for a leg infection and diagnosed with dementia. Doctors recommended a nursing home due to his inability to manage daily living. But Borik opted to stay in his house. 

In early 2015, a 42-year-old woman appeared at a nearby grocery store Borik frequented, the public guardian’s office said in court filings. She said she needed surgery, records show.

Between March and August of that year, records show, Borik made 22 payments to the woman totaling $162,455. 

“The same thing is happening again,” a Catholic Charities caseworker wrote. “Client is a hoarder and the house is unlivable.” 

But Catholic Charities closed Case B on Christmas Eve 2015, citing Borik’s refusal of services.

Sebastián Hidalgo / Injustice Watch

What’s referred to as Case C began in the summer of 2016, when Borik called Catholic Charities after being taken for $39,200 by a home-repair scammer who promised to lay concrete in front of Borik’s home on North Lowell Avenue. If he didn’t get the job, the man told Borik, he would be deported and likely killed.

Borik made three cash payments, then “the alleged abuser vanished,” an APS report said.

Borik told Catholic Charities he went to the police but that they would not take a report because he could not name this new abuser. The nonprofit closed Case C on July 20, 2016, noting that Borik didn’t know the name of the abuser “and client gave money of his own free will.”

Case D was opened a few days later. A 23-year-old woman struck up a conversation with Borik at a Tony’s Finer Foods. Borik ended up buying her a $12,000 Ford Fusion and authorized $75,000 in bank withdrawals that allegedly went to her and family members, records show. 

No criminal charges were filed against her or anyone else in cases B through D. 

Sebastián Hidalgo / Injustice Watch

In his room, Borik keeps a reference book on plants, using prayer guides as bookmarks. 

“In the Army, you’re drafted, you’re there, it’s maybe not what you want,” he said. “It’s not a perfect life, by any means. But I try to do what’s right.”

Contributing: Carlos Ballesteros | Injustice Watch, Alex Richards | Syracuse University, Mrinali Dhembla