FEDERAL RICO CASE BASED IN FRAUDULENT GUARDIANSHIP
July 10, 2025
Tallahassee, Florida
By Brett Darken
A civil RICO case has been filed Florida Federal Court by the daughters of the late Victor Lambou.
The suit, authored by attorney Michael Federigos (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 children.
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 fraud or crime into a “racket” is that two or more people worked together to commit and/or benefit from the criminal act.
In the Florida complaint, the organization or “enterprise” that was the home of the fraud was a “voluntary guardianship” supervised by the defendants. While unusual, 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 suit against the attorneys and caregivers who 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
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, and the founder of “The Sketchley Method.”
After the death of Victors wife, his daughter moved into Victor’s home to provide care for her elderly father.
She had been called by the family for advice on what seemed to be a trivial matter: Mr. Lambou’s longtime housekeeper was suspected of stealing from him.
The suite 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 document, Mr. Lambou surrendered many of his rights over to Sketchley, Dr. Kessler and Ms. Van Meter. The suit claims that once the trio got legal control of Victor’s life, they coordinated his removal from his home—where he lived for free—and his placement into a “care facility” that charged him thousands of dollars per month.
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 as a dementia patient, Victor did not qualify for the voluntary guardianship agreement they lured him into signing. Moreover, the defendants knew that Victor’s lack of mental capacity prevented him from entering into the legal and contractual agreement the lured him into signing.
The defendants then presented this fraudulent contract to the courts, financial institutions and healthcare providers as a legitimate, binding document.
Once the “voluntary guardianship” was in place, and Mr. Lambou under their control, the suit claims that the defendants used this document as excuse to drain the assets of the estate by billing the dementia patient for services and care that were not needed or wanted.
Defendants were sent drafts of this report, but none offered comment for the record.
The full test of the complaint can be sourced 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.
