Sometimes a nursing home resident has the option of setting up a nursing home trust fund account where he or she can deposit money to be used for to pay for his or her nursing home expenses. While this relieves family members of the tasks of managing their loved one’s nursing home funds, the security of these accounts are not guaranteed because of insufficient oversight. An investigative report by USA Today recently shed some light on the problem.

The USA Today report found over 1,500 cases where federal and state regulators cited nursing homes for mishandling residents’ trust account funds. Most of the violations consisted of inadequate accounting, non-payment of interest and denying residents access to funds. More serious violations involved the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from resident accounts by staff, who spent the money on gambling and shopping sprees and anything else.

One employee reportedly billed personal purchases to resident nursing home trust funds, targeting accounts belonging to residents who had dementia or no family. Over the course of a year, she had stolen over $100,000 from more than 80 residents in two different facilities. She was finally nabbed when a staff member noticed a $90 debit for jeans from an account belonging to male resident who had lost both of his legs.

Nursing home trust fund theft can go undetected for a long time. Few states have a system in place for auditing these funds, and there are currently no federal auditing requirements. In addition, USA Today reported in a follow-up article that many states do not require background checks on employees that manage nursing home trust accounts.