A collaboration between adult protective services and forensic accounting examiners to investigate complex financial exploitation: formative evaluation findings

ABSTRACT

Financial exploitation (FE) is one of the most common reports to Adult Protective Services (APS) and the cases are often complex. Consequently, APS caseworkers report FE investigations to be among the most difficult while simultaneously reporting low confidence in productive outcomes for these investigations. This necessitates finding ways to support APS FE investigations. This paper describes the structure, process, and formative findings of a collaboration between forensic accounting examiners and APS workers to investigate complex cases of FE. Among the 77 FE cases completed, forensic examiners reviewed multiple years of financial records which included over 101,000 transactions, totaling over $213,000,000.00 in finances, and identified over $8,000,000 in questionable activity. Scores on the 8-item Client Satisfaction Questionnaire were high indicating high program satisfaction by APS workers, subject matter experts, and forensic examiners. These findings support the feasibility and acceptability of forensic accounting and APS collaborations to investigate complex cases of FE.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult protective services
• Elder mistreatment
• Financial exploitation
• Forensic accounting services
• Multidisciplinary teams

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, JB, upon reasonable request.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Administration for Community Living [HHS001332700001].