Financial advisers are supposed to bring you security and peace of mind, especially when they’re assisting you in end-of-life details like your will and estate. It’s stressful enough of a process thinking about death and the sum total of your time on Earth without worrying about whether advisers like William Dilley are out to scam you.
66-year-old William Dilley must have been in desperate straights, or saw a golden opportunity for a quick buck. One of his clients was a 93-year-old woman from Solon. She was sick and fading fast and there sat her estate, worth $750,000.
Dilley noticed that the woman had no relatives — no grandchildren, children, or sisters to check up on the paperwork. Her will left her accumulated wealth to a few friends, Holy Family Cancer Center, and Save-A-Pet.
They surely wouldn’t miss her money, he thought to himself, and with the woman’s mental health as shabby as her physical health, she would sign anything put in front of her, trusting her honorable financial adviser.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2011.
My mom is a victim of exploitation as well, this crime is a lot more common than most people realize. Something needs to be done to protect our society’s most vulnerable from the cowardly predators that choose to victimize them. Additionally, the prosecutor’s and the police need to treat this less like a civil matter and more like the crime it truly is!
Miss Montgomery, I met her playing an organ at church when I was 6 years old. A year later she contacted my dad for whatever reason. My mom told me many years later that she was widowed 3 times and she even came to my home! From my research she remarried in 2000 to a guy named John, that I remember walking in on us through her front door. When I was a preteen, she requested that I visit her. I was surprised her husband John wasn’t there.. bummer. I forget what we talked about but it was just me and her. The last time she requested that I be there for her was a year before she died. I was sitting there, the same distance from her from when I met her petting Fluffy and Sweety.