FEDERAL RICO CASE BASED IN FRAUDULENT GUARDIANSHIP
Original publication: June 10, 2025
Tallahassee, Florida
By Brett Darken
A civil RICO case has been filed in Florida Federal Court by the daughters of the late Victor Lambou.
The suit, authored by attorney Michael Ferderigos (shown left) claims that Mr. Lambou, a widower and dementia patient, was lured into a “voluntary guardianship” by a team of Florida “elder care” providers. Once trapped in the guardianship, the elder care experts used their positions of power to drain the life savings of Victor and his late wife, leaving almost nothing for his three daughters.
RICO stand for the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act. “RICO” statutes originated about 50 years ago in the fight against organized crime. RICO cases involve crimes ranging from mail fraud to murder. What transforms a simple crime into a “racket” is that two or more people worked together to commit and/or benefit from the criminal act. When two or more people conspire together to do an illegal thing they are acting as an “organization” or an “enterprise.”
GUARDIANSHIP AS CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE
In the Florida complaint, the organization or “enterprise” that was the hub of the fraud was a “voluntary guardianship” supervised by the defendants and empowered by Florida’s State courts.
This is not the first time a guardianship was at the center of a RICO case. In Ohio, the family of Dr. Medhi Saghafi filed a RICO suit against the attorneys and caregivers who they claimed placed Mrs. Saghafi into a guardianship. The full Saghafi complaint can be found here:
https://www.stopprobatefraud.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2019.01.31-ohio-saghafi-RICO-racketeering-complaint.pdf
In 2017, the Department of Justice indicted and convicted a group of guardians operating in New Mexico. More information on that case can be found here:
FLORIDA CASE DETAILS
According to the complaint, the guardianship fraudulently stripped Mr. Lambou of his control over his life: His healthcare, his social life, his residence. Along with that, the suit claims that the racketeers targeted his assets, and drained the estate he and his wife had built for his daughters.
Broadly, the suit claims that rather than protect and serve Mr. Lambou, the “elder care professionals” used their power target the assets of the retired widower.The 130 page complaint includes more than 400 specific items and names more than a dozen defendants. The defendants include local elder care experts, attorneys, accountants, realtors, trustees, doctors and a number of large corporations.
The complaint details that Attorney Twyla Sketchley (shown left) was the author of Victor’s estate plan. Sketchley presents herself as an expert in elder law, exploitation and the founder of “The Sketchley Method.” https://www.stopprobatefraud.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/The-Sketchley-method-Overview-.pdf
After the death of Victors wife, his daughter moved into Victor’s home to provide care for her elderly father. The family contacted attorney Sketchley for advice on what seemed to be a trivial matter: Mr. Lambou’s longtime housekeeper was suspected of stealing from him.
The suit claims that instead of simply firing the housekeeper, and removing her from Mr. Lambou’s experience, Sketchley schemed with defendants Howard Kessler, MD, and Dr.Kessler’s wife, Ann Van Meter in a coordinated plan to target Victor’s assets. They did this by luring the dementia patient into signing himself into a “voluntary guardianship.”
In signing this “voluntary” document, Mr. Lambou surrendered many of his financial and civil rights over to Sketchley, Kessler and Ms. Van Meter.
Legally, the specific fraud involves the violation of Florida Statute 744.341 by Sketchley, Kessler and Van Meter. This statute details that “voluntary guardianship” is when “a mentally competent adult, who is physically incapable of managing their property or financial affairs (often due to age or physical condition), voluntarily petitions the court to appoint a guardian to manage their estate.”
As elder care experts, the defendants knew that Victor was a dementia patient, and did not qualify for the voluntary guardianship agreement they lured him into signing. More broadly, the defendants knew that Victor’s lack of mental capacity prevented him from entering into any legal or contractual agreement.
The suit claims that once the trio had Victor’s signed “voluntary guardianship” in hand, they presented this fraudulent contract to the court, financial institutions and healthcare providers as a legitimate, binding contract. Then the trio began dismantling the life savings of the Lambou family, starting by removing of Victor from his home—where he lived for free—and placing him into a “care facility” that charged him thousands of dollars per month.
BEFORE THE COURT
The Federal Court will rule on important issues of contracts, finances, civil rights and professional standards in estates. These rulings may impact the law for every family in the U.S.A. and include:
- Is there an exception to Florida’s code 744.341 that makes it legal for attorneys and elder care experts to place an incapacitated person into a “voluntary” guardianship?
- Is it legal for any person or group to knowingly have an incapacitated person sign legal documents?
- Is it legal for any person or group to advance those documents (as reliable and legitimate) to the court, medical and/or financial institutions?
- Is it Civil Rights violation to lure (or induce) an elderly or incapacitated person into signing a fraudulent contract that strips them of their agency?
Defendants were sent drafts of this report, but none offered comment for the record.
The full text of the complaint can be found here: https://www.stopprobatefraud.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2025-Florida-Lambou-US-RICO-Case.pdf.
Updated reports will be filed as the case evolves.
For tips, corrections or updates, please contact the editors at stopprobatefraud@gmail.com.
Brett Darken serves as an estate administrator, trustee and fiduciary. He writes about fraud in probates, trusts and estates for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE)
