The caregiver smiled, brought bagels, and quietly took control.

Within three years, nearly $1 million vanished.

Then she died — 100 days after her victim. The body at cremation weighed 70 pounds too much. No obituary. No funeral. No family on the death certificate.

She'd done this before. Same playbook. Different victim. A decade earlier.

Most families don't realize anything is wrong until the money is gone. For readers of Ann Rule and every adult child who believes "it could never happen to us."

Joell Fleming was a sharp-tongued, fiercely independent, 78-year-old widow who trusted her new "friend," caregiver Esmeralda Gomez. Esmeralda sat in the room when the neurologist diagnosed Joell with moderate cognitive impairment.

Then the spending exploded.

Credit cards used twenty-five miles from home. The last charge came the day after Joell died.

Jewelry worth tens of thousands, family heirlooms passed down generations, disappeared. A storage unit that once held decades of belongings stood nearly empty.

The Caregiver's Game is part forensic investigation, part family memoir, part practical warning for every family with an aging parent at home.

From 700 miles away, Charles Wallace spent five years doing what the professionals never did — pulling a decade of credit card records to expose a serial predator who had used the same playbook on another elderly victim years earlier.
What he found will change how you read a bank statement.
What you'll learn:

    How charges placed seconds apart and miles outside a loved one's neighborhood signal active exploitation
    Why a caregiver's presence during medical appointments is a red flag, not a comfort
    The documents most families never check until it's too late
    How to respond when something feels wrong, even before you can prove it

Praise & Recognition
"A gift to adult children worrying about their older adult parent(s)… should be used for training what financial elder abuse looks like." — Peter A. Lichtenberg, PhD, ABPP, Director, Institute of Gerontology, Wayne State University
"A grief-soaked memoir and a warning label at the same time… It might make you pick up the phone and check on someone." — Literary Titan
Eric Hoffer Award Montaigne Medal Nominee · Literary Titan Gold Book Award
If someone is caring for your parents, read this before it's too late