Why Did a Georgia Woman Try to Trick a Judge Concerning Her Son’s Special Needs Trust?

A Georgia woman surrendered to the Gwinnett County Detention Center recently and remains behind bars without bond on charges of perjury, forgery, identity theft, theft by deception, criminal solicitation and exploitation of an at-risk adult who had a special needs trust.

Yvonne Longmire’s son, 20-year-old Lee Earnest Longmire, is still missing. He has been declared a ward of the state but his guardian at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services has not seen him or cared for him.

11alive.com’s recent report, “Mother accused of trying to swindle special needs son out of trust fund turns herself in,” says that Yvonne Longmire and her attorney informed the police that Lee is “okay” but haven’t divulged his whereabouts or cooperated in turning him over to DFCS, as ordered by the state. The attorney told police that a doctor signed off on Lee’s recovery, stating he had become higher functioning. The man has special needs and has not been seen in years. His mother is accused of attempting to scam him out of his trust fund.

"Obviously, there are different interpretations of what OK is. We need to make sure that he's OK to the standards set forth by the state," Gwinnett Police spokesperson Wilbert Rundles said.

Yvonne Longmire is accused of hiring another man, 23-year-old Maurice Ford from Atlanta, to take her son’s place in court to convince a judge that he no longer needed a conservator over his trust fund, which is valued at $200,000. However, before the funds could be withdrawn and given to Yvonne, the former conservatory attorney and his paralegal became suspicious and called the police.

According to the police report, Yvonne provided a driver’s license to the attorney, who acted as Lee’s conservator, but he said the picture didn’t look like Lee. The paralegal found a photo of Lee on Facebook, and the two confirmed it wasn’t the same person.

But one of Lee’s old teachers also saw the driver’s license and said it was him, according to the police report.

Maurice Ford was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona and is currently awaiting extradition to face charges in Georgia. In the meantime, the search continues for Lee.

"Our primary focus is his safety," Rundles said. "We care about his well-being, we care about his safety and we want the people that are going to be able to take care of him to provide him care or put him in a long-term care facility, where he can be cared for by someone who does have his best interests at heart."

Reference: 11alive.com (March 5, 2019) “Mother accused of trying to swindle special needs son out of trust fund turns herself in”