Opinion ID: 4471377
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Financial Exploitation of an Elderly Adult

Text: James also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence used to convict him of financial exploitation of an elderly adult for making two withdrawals from the victim’s account under the power of attorney. In challenging the sufficiency of the evidence of this offense, James relies upon the same argument he proffers in challenging his convictions for theft by unauthorized taking — that the State failed to introduce direct evidence, in the form of the victim’s testimony, to prove that his act of withdrawing funds from the victim’s account was unauthorized. However, to prove the crime of financial exploitation of an elderly adult, the State was not required to prove that James took funds without authorization from the victim; it was required to prove that James took funds, in breach of a fiduciary duty, without authorization from the instrument establishing that fiduciary duty — the power of attorney. See RSA 631:9, I(a)(2). As an initial matter, we note that the power of attorney itself does not appear in the record before us. Accordingly, we rely upon the portions of the power of attorney that were read into the record by a witness at trial. According to the power of attorney, James had the authority to make decisions regarding the victim’s money and spend the money on her behalf. However, it placed James under a fiduciary duty to make such financial decisions in a way that is “reasonable in view of the interests of the [victim] and in view of the way in which a person of ordinary judgment would act in carrying out that person’s own affairs.” Further, the power of attorney prohibited James from “us[ing] the money or property for [his] own benefit or to make gifts to [him]self or others.” 9 The State did not introduce direct evidence to demonstrate that James conducted the two withdrawals for his own benefit rather than for the benefit of the victim. However, we conclude that the State introduced sufficient circumstantial evidence to exclude all reasonable conclusions to the contrary. The evidence presented at trial establishes that James withdrew $812 on March 4, 2015, and $425 on September 21, and that there was a corresponding deposit into the defendants’ checking account. The evidence also shows that these withdrawals occurred well after the defendants depleted nearly all of the victim’s funds. This evidence, viewed together with the evidence that the defendants typically did not deposit large sums of cash in their own accounts prior to November 2011, was sufficient to exclude any reasonable conclusion except that James withdrew the money for his own benefit, which was not reasonable in view of the interests of the victim. Therefore, the State introduced sufficient evidence to prove that James was not authorized by the power of attorney to make the two withdrawals.