Your Recourse When Something Is Taken

Name It Correctly First

What's happening has a legal name: elder financial exploitation, defined broadly as the illegal or improper use of an older adult's funds, property, or assets, and federal consumer-protection guidance treats it as a distinct, reportable category of abuse rather than an ordinary theft dispute 1Ref 1Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2025).Protecting Older Adults from Fraud and Financial Exploitation.Supports defining and framing caregiver theft as a form of elder financial exploitation, a distinct, reportable category of abuse, and the safeguards relevant to preventing it.. That distinction matters because it opens reporting channels — Adult Protective Services, banking fraud units, sometimes law enforcement elder-abuse units — that a generic "my stuff is missing" complaint doesn't automatically reach.

Exploitation by a caregiver is also disproportionately damaging because of the access and trust involved: this is someone who was in the home, often alone with your parent, often with knowledge of routines, passwords, or where valuables are kept. That access is exactly what the recourse process has to account for.

Document Before You Confront

The instinct to confront the caregiver immediately is understandable, but documenting first protects every option that follows, including the option to do nothing rash in the moment. Write down what's missing, when it was last seen, who had access, and any dates or shift logs that narrow the window.

• Photograph any remaining valuables and jewelry, and note serial numbers on electronics or appliances if you have them
• Pull recent bank and credit card statements for unfamiliar charges or withdrawals, not just the specific item that prompted the concern
• Save any texts, notes, or messages from the caregiver that reference money, gifts, or access to accounts
• Write a timeline while it's fresh — memory of "who was here when" degrades fast

This record is what turns a suspicion into something Adult Protective Services, a bank's fraud department, or police can actually act on.

Who to Report It To

Report suspected exploitation to more than one place at once, because each has a different power to act. Adult Protective Services investigates abuse and exploitation of older adults and can intervene even without a criminal charge; local police can open a theft investigation; and any bank or credit card company involved can freeze accounts and dispute unauthorized charges. The federal Eldercare Locator is a starting point if you don't already know your local Adult Protective Services contact, connecting families to local aging and elder-abuse resources 2Ref 2Administration for Community Living, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2024).Eldercare Locator.Supports that the Eldercare Locator is a federal referral service connecting families to local aging and elder-abuse resources, including where to find local Adult Protective Services contacts..

If money moved through a bank account, cards, or a check, report it to the financial institution directly and ask about their fraud or elder-exploitation team specifically — many now have one, because caregiver exploitation is common enough to warrant it.

Agency, Registry, or Private Hire: The Recourse Differs

How the caregiver was hired changes what recourse looks like beyond police and Adult Protective Services. Through an agency, you can also file a formal complaint with the agency itself, which may carry insurance or a fidelity bond that can reimburse a documented loss, and the agency has its own obligation to respond to a report about staff conduct.

Hired privately, there's no employer standing behind the caregiver to absorb the loss or investigate on your behalf — accountability tradeoff is one of the real costs of skipping an agency, and it's most visible exactly in a moment like this. Recourse against a private hire runs through the same channels — police, small claims court for a documented financial loss, and Adult Protective Services — without an intermediary organization to lean on. Because hiring someone directly generally makes you their household employer for tax purposes, you likely already have some paper trail — pay records, a signed agreement — that documentation can now serve a second purpose in a police report or claim 3Ref 3Internal Revenue Service (2025).Topic no. 756, Employment taxes for household employees.Supports that privately hiring a caregiver generally makes the family a household employer with recordkeeping obligations, which produces a paper trail (pay records, agreements) relevant to a theft report or claim..

Preventing the Next One

Screening before hiring is the strongest lever available, and it applies whether or not this incident leads anywhere. The FTC's guidance on caregiving scams describes red flags worth checking before a caregiver is ever alone with a parent's finances: no in-person interview, resistance to a background check, or unusual urgency around being paid or given access to accounts 4Ref 4Federal Trade Commission (2024).Is it a caregiving job or a scam?.Supports red flags to screen for before hiring a caregiver, relevant to preventing future exploitation..

For an ongoing arrangement, some families use a Medicaid or VA self-directed program that comes with a support broker or counselor who helps manage the relationship and can be a resource if something goes wrong, rather than the family navigating it entirely alone 5Ref 5Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025).Self-Directed Services.Supports that Medicaid self-directed programs let a beneficiary manage a budget and hire/manage their own caregiver, often with a support broker involved, relevant to ongoing oversight of a caregiving relationship.. Restricting a caregiver's independent access to cash, cards, or account logins from the start — regardless of how trustworthy they seem — closes the door this kind of exploitation actually walks through.

What to Expect After You Report It

Reporting is the start of a process, not an instant resolution, and knowing the shape of it ahead of time makes it easier to stay patient through the parts that move slowly. Adult Protective Services will typically open a case, interview your parent (often alone, to reduce the chance of a caregiver influencing the answers), and assess both the immediate safety and the financial exploitation claim; investigation timelines vary widely by state and caseload.

A police theft report creates an official record even if criminal charges take time, or never materialize — that record still matters for insurance, bonding, or civil claims later. If a bank account was involved, most institutions have a defined dispute window for unauthorized transactions, so the earlier a fraud report is filed, the more of that window remains. Expect to be asked for the same documentation more than once, by different agencies; keeping the timeline and evidence organized in one place from the start saves having to reconstruct it under pressure each time. It's also reasonable, in the meantime, to change the caregiving arrangement — pausing the caregiver's access, adding supervision, or ending the arrangement entirely — without waiting for an investigation to conclude first.