{"id":443608,"date":"2026-01-30T19:21:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T19:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443608\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T19:21:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T19:21:22","slug":"tacoma-mans-28m-probate-for-profit-scheme-spawns-wa-bill-targeting-loopholes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443608\/","title":{"rendered":"Tacoma man\u2019s $28M \u2018probate for profit\u2019 scheme spawns WA bill targeting loopholes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington lawmakers on Tuesday heard testimony on a bill that would close loopholes in the state\u2019s probate system that allowed a Tacoma man and his associates to siphon millions of dollars from dead strangers\u2019 estates by selling homes, cars and valuables.<\/p>\n

When someone dies in Washington, probate is the legal process where the deceased\u2019s property is redistributed, creditors are paid and heirs receive inheritance. If the person who died doesn\u2019t have a last will and testament, a list of people is entitled to serve as personal representatives to administer the estate, starting with surviving spouses and family members.<\/p>\n

The law also has language that allows \u201cany suitable person\u201d to be appointed by a court to administer a probate after 40 days. Assistant attorney general Ben Carr told the state House committee on Civil Rights & Judiciary that this \u201ccatch-all\u201d language is what has been abused, and it\u2019s what House Bill 2445 would reign in.<\/p>\n

Carr was part of Attorney General Nick Brown\u2019s successful lawsuit against the group of people who became third-party probate administrators of more than 200 estates<\/a> in Kitsap and Pierce counties between 2019 and 2024. The profiteers, led by John B. Elliott, sold 90 homes altogether worth more than $28 million while collecting commissions and fees for themselves.<\/p>\n

In one case in Burien, the Attorney General\u2019s Office has said, the group gained control of a woman\u2019s childhood home after her sister died of cancer. They received $110,000 through the sale of the house. Another victim who assumed the probate administrators were legitimate because they were court appointed had everything stolen from her family member\u2019s house, according to the AG\u2019s Office, including family heirlooms and her mother\u2019s ashes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, they are taking advantage of grieving families in order to profit,\u201d Carr testified Tuesday.<\/p>\n

House Bill 2445<\/a> was drafted at Brown\u2019s request. It would limit persons appointed under the \u201csuitable person\u201d provision to two petitions for appointment per year unless they are a bank, trust company or a professional service corporation formed by attorneys. It would disqualify people from acting as personal representatives if they have been convicted of a recent felony or a crime of moral turpitude, or if they have had letters of administration revoked in the last two years.<\/p>\n

The bill would give surviving spouses, next of kin and other individuals prioritized to act as personal representatives more time to petition for letters of administration. It also would require probate proceedings to occur in the Washington county where the decedent resided at the time of death or where any part of the estate may be if they were not living in the state.<\/p>\n

Currently, proceedings must occur in the county selected by the petitioner. A staff report read at Tuesday\u2019s hearing said the \u201cprobates for profit\u201d scheme relied on that to start probate proceedings in counties unconnected to the deceased, sometimes far away from potential heirs.<\/p>\n

The bill would require appointed personal representatives to give notice to all heirs or beneficiaries of the estate within 20 days of their appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill is about protecting people, particularly a vulnerable group of people,\u201d said a sponsor of the bill, Democratic Rep. Adison Richards, who serves the state\u2019s 26th Legislative District, which includes Gig Harbor, Bremerton and the Key Peninsula.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Washington State Attorney General\u2019s Office said John B. Elliott and another defendant purchased this Central Tacoma home in 2021 for $10 \u201cand other valuable consideration\u201d after convincing the the estate\u2019s heir there was little value in the property.<\/p>\n

(Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer)<\/p>\n

Republican Rep. Jim Walsh, ranking minority member of the committee, questioned whether the proposed changes to the probate system would make a complex legal process only more complicated for laypeople.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it may make it harder for exploitive organizations to insinuate themselves into a probate process, it also seems to me to make the process even more complicated for an heir or an individual who is not trained in the law,\u201d Walsh said.<\/p>\n

Richards said the intent of the bill was to make the process easier to understand but also to protect consumers. The representative told Walsh he\u2019d be happy to engage with him on potential hang-ups he sees for laypeople.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea here is really to try to clamp down on abusive practices,\u201d Richards said.<\/p>\n

During public testimony, Carr explained that those involved in Elliott\u2019s probate scheme generally identified potential families to exploit by driving around and looking for homes that appeared in disrepair with no one living in them. Through internet searches, they would find out the owners had died and that no one had launched a probate, and they would do so themselves to get access to the house and sell it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Mr. Elliott\u2019s particular instance, he would, once in control of the probate, he would then hire his own contracting firm to fix up the house at whatever rates he chose to pay himself and then would use his own real estate firm to sell the house and pay himself an inflated commission,\u201d Carr said. \u201cIn that way he gained access and siphoned money out of the estates.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington lawmakers on Tuesday heard testimony on a bill that would close loopholes in the state\u2019s probate system…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[183354,183347,45,49,48,183352,133,183351,131,183348,132,183350,69736,183349,183353,3642],"class_list":["post-443608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-adison-richards","tag-ben-carr","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-court-appointed","tag-finance","tag-john-b-elliott","tag-personal-finance","tag-personal-representatives","tag-personalfinance","tag-probate-proceedings","tag-probate-process","tag-probate-system","tag-suitable-person","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}