By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

The Livingston County State’s Attorney’s office has been dealing with an excess of cases when it comes to financial exploitation of elderly and disabled individuals, and one way to minimize those cases is to spot them before they happen.

State’s Attorney Randy Yedinak said a lot of these cases happen when an alleged abuser withholds a material fact from the individual in order to gain a financial interest in something.

“They’re difficult cases to prosecute because we have victims who are disabled or elderly who are suffering usually from some sort of dementia or things of that nature. Unfortunately, we need those victims to testify. We need their testimony in order to prove the case, but they don’t remember things so well. It tends to be an uphill and so oftentimes, I’ll tell people the best way to stop the crime is to prevent the crime from happening in the first place. Look for the warning signs you can look for that kind of pop out to us, at least, when someone is being exploited like that,” Yedinak said.

Yedinak was a guest on a recent Community Forum, where he further explains cases like this. That can be found at wjez.com.