The Associated Press reports on another instance of home health aides stealing identity information or credit cards from the vulnerable individuals they are supposed to be caring for:
Juliet Rose Levesque, a home healthcare provider from Fall River, stole the identity of a Bristol man for whom she was providing in-home nursing services. Levesque is accused of conspiring with her cousin, Paul McKenzie, of Rex, Ga., to use the man’s identity to steal money from his bank account between April and August of 2009.
This type of thing has actually happened to one of my patients. Luckily, the bank caught the suspicious charges quickly, and the matter was turned over to the police, but if you are hiring a home health aide from an agency for yourself or a loved one, do inquire about what kinds of background checks they do on their employees. I don’t know the details of this particular case in Massachusetts, but I think it’s just good security advice.