Utah businesswoman gets prison for exploiting elderly and vulnerable clients
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Collin Leonard, KSL.com
SALT LAKE CITY (KSL.com) — A Murray woman has been sentenced to prison after she financially exploited 76 elderly and otherwise vulnerable clients who trusted her as a fiduciary to take care of their finances, according to court documents.
Janine Marie McCauley, 49, was charged in 3rd District Court with 10 counts of unlawful dealing of property by a fiduciary and engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity, second-degree felonies.
As part of an agreement signed in March, she pleaded guilty to five counts of unlawful dealing of property by a fiduciary and to engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity. The other five counts were dropped in exchange for her plea.
For her crimes, which “constituted a pattern of unlawful activity that occurred over a period from March 2019 to April 2022, McCauley was sentenced to six terms of one to 15 years in prison. The fiduciary counts were ordered to run concurrent, but the unlawful pattern charge was ordered to run consecutive to the other terms. That means she was ordered to spend at least two years and up to 30 years in prison. She was also ordered to pay $566,669 in restitution.
McCauley had been the owner and operator of Simplified Business Solutions and was responsible for managing vulnerable clients’ Social Security, COVID-19 stimulus checks, and other income to “pay rent, utilities, bills and personal necessities,” according to the indictment.
She “commingled funds and used the money for herself or someone other than the vulnerable individuals,” court documents say, allowing her clients to fall deep in debt and, in at least one case, be evicted from their assisted living facility.
According to McCauley’s guilty plea, one former client was “unable to pay her bills or buy Christmas gifts for grandchildren,” and had to “borrow money from her daughter for personal essentials,” after her income was fraudulently managed.
A man that is “cognitively unable to comprehend the totality of the situation” was “months behind on rent at his assisted living facility,” and “his sister continues to receive collection notices” after the man was forced to move, the guilty plea states.
Another woman who was a client of McCauley died in November 2021 and, due to McCauley’s actions, “remained behind on her bills at the time of her death, and this financial situation reportedly added additional stress to (the woman) right before her death.”
Other clients listed in the charging documents were left in significant debt, a burden that had to be managed and paid by family members.
The Medicaid fraud and patient abuse division of the Utah Attorney General’s Office helped investigate and prosecute the case.
A grant of over $3.5 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was awarded to the division this fiscal year, representing around 75% of its funding. The rest comes from the state of Utah, according to a press release issued Thursday.