87-year-old valley woman claims she is the victim of “financial elder abuse”

CBS Local 2 stands for you, and that includes taking a stand for an 87-year-old valley woman who claims she is the victim of “financial elder abuse”.

She says squatters now have control of a home she owns in Cathedral City.

Her savings have taken a big hit, and so has her health.

“I feel very badly. I have lost all my money. Everything I was going to retire on or leave for my children,” said Gloria Thornton

Thornton talked about the couple, who once took care of her, and who now have control of the home she owns at 28810 Avenida La Vista in Cathedral City.

The great grandmother, now living at a valley retirement home, says her former caregivers talked her into purchasing the home last October.

But Thornton doesn’t know, or can’t recall, how the caregivers received the key to the home.

Thornton’s son, David Lando, who lives in Costa Rica, says the caregivers living in the home befriended Gloria five years ago while Thornton recovered from a fractured shoulder.

“This has been the most stressful situation that I’ve ever been in and the same is true for my mother,” said Lando.

Lando says he didn’t even know his mother purchased the home, until he reviewed her tax records last June.

Concerned, he came to the desert, and found out his mom also turned over a check for $20,000 to her previous caregivers, and, purchased a new van for the couple.

Lando filed a police report, and the case is now being investigated as “financial elder abuse”.

“It is the ongoing financial abuse. They’re still there, and everyday its affecting us,” said Lando.

I recently visited the home on Avenida La Vista and briefly spoke with the people living there.

They are Michael Maglalang and his wife, Joanne, who also goes by the first name of Rachelle.

The parents of three children wouldn’t talk on camera, but Joanne spoke with me briefly through a security door.

I asked Joanne, “when do you think you’ll be out of the home?”

She replied, “as soon as we have the money to find a new home.”

The Maglalangs also said they would leave the house only after speaking with Gloria Thornton.

But Thornton doesn’t want to speak with the Maglalangs, a family with whom she once had a very close emotional bond.

“I really believed in them, and I can’t believe how I could believe so much in them,” said Thornton.

David Lando believes the Maglalangs intentionally gave his mother incorrect doses of her medications when they had daily contact with her, as part of their efforts to control and manipulate her.

He blames his mother’s two recent heart attacks on the stress caused by the fight over the house.

Lando and his mom want the ex-caregivers out of the house so they can sell it, to help pay for Gloria’s long-term care.

“I feel horrible about it, and how they could lie like that, when you believe in somebody so much, and then you find out they lied to you. Its really hard to accept,” said Gloria.

A specialist at Eisenhower Medical Center says most likely Gloria Thornton didn’t realize what she did when she signed documents to purchase the home last October.

A police official tells us their investigation could result in criminal charges being filed against the Maglalangs.