HALIFAX - As he pored over the accounts of the Nova Scotia nursing home he manages, John Budgell noticed a pattern -- a relative of an 85-year-old resident hadn't been paying the medical bills to help the woman cope with advanced Alzheimer's.

Budgell says he later felt frustration and sadness as he dealt with a family member who had power of attorney over the woman's savings while she struggled through her final months.

"It's very hard dealing with people in a rational way ... and trying to keep your emotions in check when you know somebody is being taken advantage of," said Budgell, the director of the Queens Manor in Liverpool.

It's the kind of case that lobby groups for the elderly say they are noticing with alarming frequency as special police units and civil lawyers launch a growing number of cases against relatives who take financial advantage of seniors.

In the Nova Scotia case, recently released documents from the Health Department show an investigator started a probe in February 2009 under the Protection of Persons in Care Act and formally determined that financial abuse had occurred.

"A family member was responsible for paying resident's bills and only made two payments on the account since November 2007," the document says.

"The family member failed to file resident's taxes, and as a result the resident was not eligible for the senior's pharmacare program, resulting in high medication bills."

The power of attorney was withdrawn and bills were repaid through the woman's pension.

Across the country, other incidents and allegations are emerging before the courts, and from Canada's banking watchdog and some police agencies that are doing more investigations of financial abuse of the elderly by caregivers and relatives. Among those cases are:

  • A woman in her 60s from Oshawa, Ont., is serving her sentence for a 2009 conviction for defrauding her mother, an Alzheimer's patient, of $92,000 while serving as her power of attorney.
  • Ottawa's police department has a special elder abuse unit that has done 680 investigations in the past five years, of which about 420 -- or 62 per cent are -- involve allegations of financial abuse. Officers in the unit say there has been an increase in financial abuse cases each year.
  • The elder abuse response team with the Waterloo regional police force has noted their investigations rose by 13 per cent from 2008-09 to 2009-10, going from 130 to 147 cases. The senior officer says financial abuses are the most common type of investigation.
  • The Toronto-based Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments -- an organization that resolves disputes between participating banking and investment firms -- says it investigated a case where a woman's son convinced her to set up a line of credit against her house. When $90,000 in savings was gone due to poor handling of the funds, the woman couldn't make payments and her home was put up for sale.

Laura Watts, the director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law, a branch of the B.C. Law Institute, said financial abuse often involves the misuse of power of attorney, where a relative, caregiver or trusted friend is given the right to make financial decisions on behalf of an elderly person.

The centre has noticed a rising number of incidents where relatives with joint accounts or access to debit cards steal from the elderly, and Watts believes the problem is about to become much worse because of the debt load of baby boomers.

"You have an asset-rich older generation. You've got a debt-ridden, poorer population having a difficult time in the markets," said Watts.

"There's a lot of myths like ... that's really my money, I'm just going to inherit it anyway, she doesn't need that money now. Dad really earned it for us and the kids."

The impact on families is devastating, said Tony Budkowski, who pressed for the prosecution against his sister, Heather Cann, in the case in Oshawa, which led to a sentence of two years' house detention.

He said he's still coping with debt left after his mother, Muriel, died.

"It destroyed the whole family, I guess," he said. "She (his sister) left my mother in debt and nobody to pay for it."

Budkowski says prosecutions and convictions are vital to send a message of deterrence.

"The prosecutions are absolutely the most important thing as far as this kind of thing. It's the only way you're going to stop it. ... But police are only hearing about 10 per cent of it," he said.

"It goes on and on, but families are embarrassed to admit to it and also they decide not to get a person in trouble."

Doug Melville, the ombudsman for banking services and investments, said his staff are involved in a rising number of cases where relatives are emptying out the bank accounts of their fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles.

"Seniors who suffer this kind of financial abuse late in life, when they can't earn it back, it actually shortens their life expectancy," he said.

Dawn Thomas, a civilian member of the RCMP who works with seniors in rural communities in southwestern Nova Scotia, said part of the problem is that police have difficulty gathering enough evidence for a prosecution.

"It can be quite a challenge for criminal charges to be laid, especially if there's a power of attorney misuse potentially involved. ... Whether they needed to buy those new snow tires or that new vehicle for their mother, it's difficult for us to prove. It's a grey area," she said.

Cases often arise of siblings with radically different views of what's appropriate, said Thomas.

In Digby Neck, N.S., Linda Graham has copies of cheques recording purchases her brother made while he had power of attorney for her mother, including one for over $16,200 for a new car he purchased.

Their mother recently died.

Graham has taken the materials to police, alleging improper use of power of attorney, but she said she's been told on two occasions an investigation won't proceed.

Her brother, Robert Seeley, acknowledges he purchased the car for the stated amount but says he had his mother's permission.

The car was also used, Seeley said, to drive his mother to New Brunswick and around Nova Scotia.

"It got her out every day to where she (the mother) wanted to go," he said.

As police face challenges in their investigations, Sgt. John Keating, the seniors' support co-ordinator with Durham regional police in Ontario, said he believes more elder abuse units are needed across the country.

He estimated there about 20 police agencies in Ontario now that are members of the Law Enforcement Agencies Protecting Seniors, an association of specialists in the field of assisting the elderly.

Beyond stepping up enforcement, the veteran officer also said he believes society needs to return to holding the elderly in high regard.

He keeps a banner in his office that reads "dignity and respect, and nothing less."