Exploitation of the elderly

Most theft statutes ask what was taken. Florida's elder exploitation statute asks something narrower and more useful: who was standing next to the person when it happened.

Fla. Stat. §825.103 makes it a felony to knowingly obtain or use an elderly person's or disabled adult's funds, assets, or property with the intent to deprive them of it — where the person doing the obtaining stands in a position of trust and confidence with the victim, or has a business relationship with them. The relationship is an element of the offence. A stranger who takes the same money is a thief under Chapter 812. A daughter, a caregiver, a neighbour who started coming by, or the agent under a power of attorney is something the legislature decided to name separately.

The statute then lists the other routes to the same result. It reaches a person who obtains property from someone they know or reasonably should know lacks the capacity to consent. It reaches a guardian, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney who appropriates, sells, or transfers property for an unauthorised benefit. It reaches unauthorised transfers out of personal accounts, joint accounts, and convenience accounts. It reaches an intentional or negligent failure to actually spend the person's own income and assets on their support — the caregiver drawing on the account while the pantry stays empty. And subsection (1)(f) reaches the fraudulent creation or alteration of a will, trust, or other testamentary device, which is the paragraph estate lawyers reread.

It is graded by money and nothing else. Under §825.103(3): $50,000 or more is a first-degree felony; $10,000 to just under $50,000 is second degree; under $10,000 is third degree. The statute has been on the books since 1995 and has been amended five times since.

Chapter 415 puts the obligation on people who see it first

Florida's Adult Protective Services Act, Chapter 415, runs on a definition wider than “elderly.” A vulnerable adult under §415.102 is a person 18 or older whose ability to perform normal activities of daily living or to provide for their own care is impaired by a disability, a mental or physical dysfunction, or the infirmities of ageing. Age alone does not put someone inside the chapter. Impairment does.

§415.1034 is the part almost nobody reads until it applies to them. A long list of professionals who know, or have reasonable cause to suspect, that a vulnerable adult has been or is being abused, neglected, or exploited must immediately report it to the central abuse hotline. The list includes physicians, nurses, paramedics, medical examiners, hospital personnel, nursing home and assisted living staff, social workers, law enforcement — and, critically for financial cases, bank, savings and loan, or credit union officers, trustees, and employees, and investment advisers.

That is the machinery. The teller who watches a 91-year-old customer arrive for the fourth time this month with the same helpful younger companion is not a bystander in Florida. They are a mandated reporter.

Three provisions make the duty workable. §415.1036 gives immunity from civil or criminal liability to anyone who reports in good faith. §415.111 makes it a second-degree misdemeanour to knowingly and wilfully fail to report, or to prevent someone else from reporting. And the hotline takes reports from anyone — the duty is mandatory for the listed professions and open to everybody else.

• The number is 1-800-96-ABUSE. It is staffed 24 hours a day by the Department of Children and Families, and reports can also be made online.
• A report starts a protective investigation under §415.104, not a prosecution. The investigator's job is to determine whether the adult is vulnerable and whether abuse, neglect, or exploitation occurred.
• Where the adult lacks capacity to consent to services, §415.1051 lets the department seek a court order for protective services — and, in the acute cases, an emergency order.
• Reporting is not the same as accusing. The hotline is a factual referral. It does not require the reporter to be right.

Two statutes, and one of them trebles

The criminal case belongs to the State. The money belongs to the victim or the victim's estate, and Florida gives it two separate ways home.

Fla. Stat. §415.1111 creates a direct civil cause of action. A vulnerable adult who has been abused, neglected, or exploited may sue for actual and punitive damages, and a prevailing party may recover reasonable attorney's fees and costs. The sentence that matters for probate: the personal representative of a deceased victim's estate may bring the action, and may bring it without regard to whether the death resulted from the abuse, neglect, or exploitation. The claim does not die with the person it was committed against.

Fla. Stat. §772.11 is the civil theft statute, and it expressly reaches a violation of §825.103(1). It allows recovery of threefold the actual damages, with minimum damages of $200, plus attorney's fees and court costs. It carries a procedural trap worth respecting: the claimant must first make a written demand and give the recipient 30 days to comply. Skip the demand letter and the treble claim is defective.

Neither statute requires a criminal conviction, and neither waits for one. A civil case can be filed while a criminal investigation is open, and a probate court can be asked to restrict distributions in the meantime.

And then there is the inheritance. §732.8031 strips a person convicted of abuse, neglect, exploitation, or aggravated manslaughter of an elderly person or disabled adult of everything they would otherwise take from that victim — under the will, by survivorship, as a beneficiary of an insurance policy, and otherwise. A conviction in any state or foreign jurisdiction counts. §736.1104 does the same in a trust. The person convicted of taking the money during life does not also collect the balance afterwards.

What the reported Florida cases actually look like

In November 2023 the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office announced an arrest arising from a four-month investigation by its Elder and Vulnerable Adult (EVA) Exploitation Task Force. The victim was a 94-year-old woman who had lived alone since 1980 in the El Portal house she bought that year, and who had been declared legally incompetent in 2021. The office reported that an acquaintance had begun presenting himself as her son at medical appointments, that her Social Security benefits were redirected, and that roughly $20,000 in cash and a home worth more than $600,000 were at stake.

Alejandro Diaz Torriente, 67, was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation, as reported by NBC 6 South Florida. It is one case, and the sentence is unusually long. What makes it representative is the shape rather than the severity: a person with no legal role who acquired one socially, an incapacity finding already on the record, and a house as the largest number in the file.

The aggregate numbers point the same direction. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans 60 and older lost $7.7 billion to reported internet crime in 2025, roughly a 60% increase over 2024 — more than any other age group. The Federal Trade Commission put total 2025 fraud losses at $15.9 billion, with adults 50 and older accounting for $4.3 billion of it. Florida is consistently among the top three states by volume of complaints from victims over 60.

Those are reported losses, which means they are a floor. The exploitation that happens inside a family is the kind least likely to become a complaint at all.