by Jake Pearson

When a New York judge appointed Yvonne Murphy to take over the care of Martin Chorost in late 2011, the 63-year-old had diabetes, dementia and a constellation of other maladies. He also had assets worth more than $800,000, which were put at his guardian’s disposal.

Murphy immediately tapped them to hire Beacon Eldercare, which billed itself as “the leading health care assistance firm in Queens,” to provide him with round-the-clock aides.

As it turned out, it was also Murphy’s own private business.

I believe that the dual roles of guardian and CEO of the agency creates the possibility and potential for a conflict of interest to exist.

Over the ensuing years, Murphy transferred between $80,000 and $100,000 annually from Chorost’s accounts to Beacon while, separately, she collected tens of thousands of dollars from him in guardianship fees. Before long, the arrangement sparked a complaint from the court examiner charged with reviewing Murphy’s work.

“I believe that the dual roles of guardian and CEO of the agency creates the possibility and potential for a conflict of interest to exist,” the court examiner wrote in June 2015. A court clerk underlined the words “conflict of interest” and drew a star in the margin next to them.

In fact, legal experts told ProPublica, the arrangement was a clear and flagrant violation of New York law, which bars guardians from providing for-profit services like health care or day care to their wards.

But Queens Supreme Court Justice Lee Mayersohn permitted the apparent conflict for years. By the time Chorost died in April 2019, Murphy had transferred more than half his life’s savings — $417,697 in all — to her company. Even then, Beacon sought more, billing his estate for an additional $50,890 in unpaid fees.

The examiner in Chorost’s case wasn’t the only one to raise alarms. Over the years, various officials — including a lawyer, a fellow guardian and even a judge — flagged Murphy’s use of Beacon in other cases, with some of them warning that she could be abusing her court-appointed position to enrich herself at the expense of her wards. But in each case, the judge overseeing the guardianship downplayed or overrode the concern.

Those decisions facilitated a lucrative — and potentially illegal — commercial pipeline for one of the court’s most popular guardians, who, over the course of a decade, controlled the money and health care of more than 100 incapacitated people, a ProPublica investigation has found.

Earlier this year, the news organization reported that New York’s guardianship system is failing to protect the elderly and ailing people entrusted to its care. Part of the problem is lax oversight, with court examiners taking years to review the work of the guardians they are tasked with overseeing. Those delays can result in dangerous gaps in information for judges charged with making sensitive decisions about the financial and physical welfare of wards — some of whom, ProPublica found, have ended up living in squalor, including one woman who endured bedbugs, rats and no heat for years. Another died without her guardian noticing, her corpse eventually discovered by a utility worker.

But Murphy’s story illustrates just how culpable judges themselves can be in the system’s breakdown, permitting financial arrangements that experts said were unequivocally improper — even in cases when examiners point out potential problems. Lawyers, advocates and researchers alike say this laissez-faire judicial culture is the product of crushing caseloads, sparse resources and a shallow pool of guardians willing to take the most challenging cases. In New York City, there are just over a dozen judges who handle the 17,411 people in guardianships, data provided by the courts show.

“The easiest way to reduce the workload is not to look for problems,” said Nina Kohn, a guardianship expert at Syracuse University College of Law. “The second-easiest way is when you see problems, to ignore them.”

ProPublica reviewed three years of Beacon’s client lists, which were disclosed in a lawsuit, and discovered that in at least 20 instances, Murphy referred a ward under her care to her own agency. In a dozen cases, she did so as the person’s guardian. In the other eight, she acted in a different role, as a court-appointed care coordinator. That total is almost certainly an undercount since Murphy served in the guardianship system for more than 15 years. Nevertheless, the data gives a clear snapshot of just how profitable the dynamic was for Murphy’s business. In those three years alone, wards accounted for $1.5 million in Beacon revenue, about a quarter of the company’s income, the records show.

Murphy’s problematic conduct did not stop there, though.

Last month, a judge ruled that Murphy had “violated her fiduciary duty” to a wealthy Manhattan woman “in ways that shock the conscience” and barred her from serving as a professional guardian. The searing decision followed years of investigations into whether Murphy steered millions in investments and real estate for her own benefit.

Murphy, who in court records has denied any wrongdoing, did not respond to numerous requests for comment. She’s been similarly unresponsive to legal........

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