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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'

Tonight (May 11) at 7PM, I’m in CALGARY for Wordfest, with my novel Red Team Blues; I’ll be hosted by Peter Hemminger at the Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor.

Home ownership is the American dream: not only do you get a place to live, free from the high-handed dictates of a landlord, but you also get an asset that appreciates, building intergenerational wealth while you sleep — literally.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

Of course, you can’t have it both ways. If your house is an asset you use to cover falling wages, rising health care costs, spiraling college tuition and paper-thin support for eldercare, then it can’t be a place you live. It’s gonna be an asset you sell — or at the very least, borrow so heavily against that you are in constant risk of losing it.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the American dream: when America turned its back on organized labor as an engine for creating prosperity and embraced property speculation, it set itself on the road to serfdom — a world where the roof over your head is also your piggy bank, destined to be smashed open to cover the rising costs that an organized labor movement would have fought:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Today, we’re hit the end of the road for the post-war (unevenly, racially segregated) shared prosperity that made it seem, briefly, that everyone could get rich by owning a house, living in it, then selling it to everybody else. Now that the game is ending, the winners are cashing in their chips:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

The big con of home ownership is proceeding smartly on schedulee. First, you let the mark win a little, so they go all in on the scam. Then you take it all back. Obama’s tolerance of bank sleze after the Great Financial Crisis kicked off the modern era of corporations and grifters stealing Americans’ out from under them, forging deeds in robosigning mills:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-breaks-down-93-bln-robo-signing-settlement-2013-02-28

The thefts never stopped. Today on Propublica, by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon bring a horrifying, brilliantly reported account of the rampant, bottomless scams of Homevestors, AKA We Buy Ugly Houses, AKA “the #1 homebuyer in the USA”:

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses

Homevestors — an army of the hedge fund Bayview Asset Management — claims a public mission: to bail out homeowners sitting on unsellable houses with all-cash deals. The company’s franchisees — 1,150 of them in 48 states — then sprinkle pixie dust and secret sauce on these “ugly houses” and sell them at a profit.

But Propublica’s investigation — which relied on whistleblowers, company veterans, court records and interviews with victims — tells a very different story. The Homevestor they discovered is a predator that steals houses out from under elderly people, disabled people, people struggling with mental illness and other vulnerable people. It’s a company whose agents have a powerful, well-polished playbook that stops family members from halting the transfers the company’s high-pressure salespeople set in motion.

Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfers that same their homes sold out from under them for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who’ve broken a hip: “a 60-day countdown to death — and, possibly, a deal.” The company’s mobile ads are geofenced to target people near hospitals and rehab hospitals, in hopes of finding desperate sellers who need to liquidate homes so that Medicaid will cover their medical expenses.

The sales pitches are relentless. One of Homevestor’s targets was a Texas woman whose father had recently been murdered. As she grieved, they blanketed her in pitches to sell her father’s house until “checking her mail became a traumatic experience.”

Real-estate brokers are bound by strict regulations, but not house flippers like Homevestors. Likewise, salespeople who pitch other high-ticket items, from securities to plane tickets — are required to offer buyers a cooling-off period during which they can reconsider their purchases. By contrast, Homevestors’ franchisees are well-versed in “muddying the title” to houses after the contract is signed, filing paperwork that makes it all but impossible for sellers to withdraw from the sale.

This produces a litany of ghastly horror-stories: homeowners who end up living in their trucks after they were pressured into a lowball sales; sellers who end up dying in hospital beds haunted by the trick that cost them their homes. One woman who struggled with hoarding was tricked into selling her house by false claims that the city would evict her because of her hoarding. A widow was tricked into signing away the deed to her late husband’s house by the lie that she could do so despite not being on the deed. One seller was tricked into signing a document he believed to be a home equity loan application, only to discover he had sold his house at a huge discount on its market value. An Arizona woman was tricked into selling her dead mother’s house through the lie that the house would have to be torn down and the lot redeveloped; the Homevestor franchisee then flipped the house for 5,500% of the sale-price.

The company vigorously denies these claims. They say that most people who do business with Homevestors are happy with the outcome; in support of this claim, they cite internal surveys of their own customers that produce a 96% approval rating.

When confronted with the specifics, the company blamed rogue franchisees. But Propublica obtained training materials and other internal documents that show that the problem is widespread and endemic to Homevestors’ business. Propublica discovered that at least eight franchisees who engaged in conduct the company said it “didn’t tolerate” had been awarded prizes by the company for their business acumen.

Franchisees are on the hook for massive recurring fees and face constant pressure from corporate auditors to close sales. To make those sales, franchisees turn to Homevana’s training materials, which are rife with predatory tactics. One document counsels franchisees that “pain is always a form of motivation.” What kind of pain? Lost jobs, looming foreclosure or a child in need of surgery.

A former franchisee explained how this is put into practice in the field: he encountered a seller who needed to sell quickly so he could join his dying mother who had just entered a hospice 1,400 miles away. The seller didn’t want to sell the house; they wanted to “get to Colorado to see their dying mother.”

These same training materials warn franchisees that they must not deal with sellers who are “subject to a guardianship or has a mental capacity that is diminished to the point that the person does not understand the value of the property,” but Propublica’s investigation discovered “a pattern of disregard” for this rule. For example, there was the 2020 incident in which a 78-year-old Atlanta man sold his house to a Homevestors franchisee for half its sale price. The seller was later shown to be “unable to write a sentence or name the year, season, date or month.”

The company tried to pin the blame for all this on bad eggs among its franchisees. But Propublica found that some of the company’s most egregious offenders were celebrated and tolerated before and after they were convicted of felonies related to their conduct on behalf of the company. For example, Hi-Land Properties is a five-time winner of Homevestors’ National Franchise of the Year prize. The owner was praised by the CEO as “loyal, hardworking franchisee who has well represented our national brand, best practices and values.”

This same franchisee had “filed two dozen breach of contract lawsuits since 2016 and clouded titles on more than 300 properties by recording notices of a sales contract.” Hi-Land “sued an elderly man so incapacitated by illness he couldn’t leave his house.”

Another franchisee, Patriot Holdings, uses the courts aggressively to stop families of vulnerable people from canceling deals their relatives signed. Patriot Holdings’ co-owner, Cory Evans, eventually pleaded guilty to to two felonies, attempted grand theft of real property. He had to drop his lawsuits against buyers, and make restitution.

According to Homevestors’ internal policies, Patriot’s franchise should have been canceled. But Homevestors allowed Patriot to stay in business after Cory Evans took his name off the business, leaving his brothers and other partners to run it. Nominally, Cory Evans was out of the picture, but well after that date, internal Homevestors included Evans in an award it gave to Patriot, commemorating its sales (Homevestors claims this was an error).

Propublica’s reporters sought comment from Homevestors and its franchisees about this story. The company hired “a former FBI spokesperson who specializes in ‘crisis and special situations’ and ‘reputation management’ and funnelled future questions through him.”

Internally, company leadership scrambled to control the news. The company convened a webinar in April with all 1,150 franchisees to lay out its strategy. Company CEO David Hicks explained the company’s plan to “bury” the Propublica article with “‘strategic ad buys on social and web pages’ and ‘SEO content to minimize visibility.’”

https://www.propublica.org/article/homevestors-aims-to-bury-propublica-reporting

Franchisees were warned not to click links to the story because they “might improve its internet search ranking.”

Even as the company sought to “bury” the story and stonewalled Propublica, they cleaned house, instituting new procedures and taking action against franchisees identified in Propublica’s article. “Clouding titles” is now prohibited. Suing sellers for breach of contract is “discouraged.” Deals with seniors “should always involve family, attorneys or other guardians.”

During the webinar, franchisees “pushed back on the changes, claiming they could hurt business.”

If you’ve had experience with hard-sell house-flippers, Propublica wants to know: “If you’ve had experience with a company or buyer promising fast cash for homes, our reporting team wants to hear about it.”

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A Depression-era photo of a dour widow standing in front of a dilapidated cabin. Next to her is Ug, the caveman mascot for Homevestors, smiling and pointing at her. Behind her is a 'We buy ugly houses' sign.

Image: Homevestors https://www.homevestors.com/

Fair use: https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property

#pluralistic #the rents too damned high #house flipping #llc brain #scams #elder abuse #ripoffs #weaponized shelter #predators #homevestors #we buy ugly houses #ugly houses #real estate #propublica

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allthecanadianpolitics · 18 days

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A Kingston, Ont., woman is accused of stealing money from disabled clients in her care.

Vicky Read, 48, was arrested March 28.

Read is charged with fraud under $5,000, breach of trust, uttering a forged document, and two counts of theft under $5,000.

The allegations stem from a time when the accused worked at a local agency that provides 24-hour care for severely disabled individuals, police said in a media release this week.

Police began investigating after the agency said money was taken from six clients under the guise of purchasing them Christmas gifts. [...]

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

#cdnpoli #Kingston #Ontario #crime and punishment in canada #elder abuse #elder care #ageism

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gwydionmisha · 8 months

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CW: Elder Abuse.

#Elder Abuse #London #Nursing Homes #Care homes #Homophobia #News

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liquidgirl13 · 2 months

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Democrats have no Biden backup plan for 2024, despite age concerns | Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democrats-have-no-biden-backup-plan-2024-despite-age-concerns-2023-11-30/

He's not fit. He rambles on incoherently. And he has slacked in his border control duties just as Harris has. It should be game over Joe. I suppose he's easier for his fellow leeches to control this way...

I may strongly dislike him, but wrong is wrong!

#elder abuse

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coochiequeens · 19 days

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Patient safety is more important than the gender feelz of the medical team responsible for their care.

By Anna Slatz April 11, 2024

A trans-identified male nurse in Austria has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the brutal murder of his elderly patient. The assailant, a 24 year-old from Slovakia, repeatedly stabbed his elderly patient last year after a dispute broke out over his gender identity.

The murder occurred on the evening of October 5 at the victim’s home in Geretsberg where the nurse was providing on-call care. Due to Austria’s strict privacy laws, neither the identity of the victim nor assailant is known, but Reduxx had learned that the nurse had been working under the masculine name “Paul” and was active in LGBT groups in Vienna. Though he is legally a male, “Paul” was referred to as a “woman” in court by witnesses and the defense.

While the motive for the crime was initially unclear, it was later revealed that the nurse attacked the 82-year-old paralyzed pensioner after the topic of the nurse’s gender identity was brought up. He went to the kitchen and retrieved multiple knives, stabbing the man eleven times in the upper body, abdomen, face and head. Following the attack, “Paul” called the victim’s stepdaughter, who immediately alerted the police.

Emergency responders initially found the man alive and attempted to stabilize him, but the victim died of his injuries at the scene.

The nurse was immediately arrested, but was taken to the psychiatric unit at the Kepler University Hospital at Neuromed after demonstrating extreme aggression and “massive psychological abnormalities.”

Staff initially believed he was under the influence of drugs due to his behavior, but a blood test only found alcohol in his system. While he claimed to have effectively “blacked out” during the killing, it was ultimately determined that “Paul” had no serious mental illness which would have impacted his legal accountability for his actions.

After being interrogated by police, the nurse immediately admitted to the killing, and claimed the attack had been the result of the victim “teasing” him due to his gender identity and making transphobic remarks. Later examination also revealed that “Paul” had separated from his boyfriend earlier that day, something that was described as a “trigger” for his impulsive behavior.

According to Puls24, psychiatric expert Adelheid Kastner testified that “Paul” had an extremely high risk of recidivism, and admission to a forensic-psychiatric center was recommended. After a short jury trial with a unanimous verdict, “Paul” was sentenced to 20 years in prison on March 26.

While he is currently being held at a men’s prison, “Paul” may seek eventual transfer to a women’s facility if he is able to change his legal documents and receive a recommendation from a psychologist.

Austria currently assesses transgender inmates on a “case-by-case” basis, though the Government has acknowledged that sex-segregated facilities must exist.

#Australia #Elder abuse #NotOurCrimes #Rest In Peace that 82-year-old paralyzed man #Male violence #Another TIM with massive psychological abnormalities #KeepPrisonsSingleSex

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salomeslashes · 10 months

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I'm feeling very strange, friends. I've got this uncle. He's a real dick. Absolute piece of work. Physically assaulted both my grandparents on separate occasions, and I've more than once been afraid for his current wife and little daughters.

He went for a hike Saturday morning and hasn't come back. He's missing. I didn't like him, I maybe even hated him, but I didn't wish him dead. If nothing else, I don't wish that pain on my mom. But like...they haven't found him yet.

It's been a tense couple of days, and I don't really know how to feel.

#salome speaks #family drama #missing person #elder abuse

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blackpantherblog · 1 year

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Capitalism is a mofo…

#capitalism #anti capitalism #capitalist bullshit #capitalist realism #capitalist society #hell #elderly #elder abuse

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arctic-hands · 1 year

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What the everloving fuck

Brown stated that she would have wanted the foot to be amputated if it had been her in the man's situation, the complaint said.

Kevin Larson, the facility administrator, also told police that Brown had not been given permission to remove the foot, but that if a hospice doctor had been asked, Larson believes they would have approved the procedure. Larson had initially told Brown to stabilize the man's foot, which was only connected by a tendon, "because VICTIM was near passing within hours," the complaint said. "He stated that VICTIM lingered longer than expected and it became a couple of days and Brown believed it was the right thing to do."

...Brown and another nurse told police that they did not think the man felt any pain during the amputation. However, another nurse said that when she asked the man what happened a few days after the foot had been removed, he "stated that when they cut his foot off he felt everything and it hurt very bad."

Several other nurses said that Brown had mentioned that she planned on having the foot taxidermied, with one nurse telling investigators that Brown had mentioned her family owns a taxidermy shop, the complaint said. At least two nurses told police that Brown intended to make a display out of the foot with some sort of sign warning people to remember to "wear your boots."

#medical abuse #elder abuse #bodily autonomy #ableism #traumatic amputation #amputation

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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KPMG audits the nursing homes it advises on how to beat audits

Tomorrow (May 10), I’m in VANCOUVER for a keynote at the Open Source Summit and a book event for Red Team Blues at Heritage Hall and on Thurs (May 11), I’m in CALGARY for Wordfest.

Auditors are capitalism’s lubricants, who keep the gears of finance capital smoothly a-whirl, allowing investors to move their money in and out of companies without having to go pore over their books and walk through their facilities. Without auditors, the gears of capitalism would grind themselves to dust:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/ink-stained-wretches/#countless

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

Unfortunately for capitalism, auditing is irredeemably broken. The Big Four auditors (PWC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG) have merged to monopoly, becoming “too big to fail” and “too big to jail.” These four gigantic firms have spun up fantastically lucrative “consulting” divisions that advise companies on how to cheat on their audits and attain incredible (paper) gains. The work of these “consultants” is worth far more than the accounting and auditing jobs the companies do, and the weaker the audits are, the more profitable the consulting is:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#crooked-ref

This crisis has been a long time brewing. Back in 2001, the accounting/consulting giant Arthur Andersen was at the center of Enron’s fraud, which lit $11B in shareholder capital on fire. Enron had been making everyday people angry for years, engineering rolling blackouts and incredible energy-price gouging, but no one cares about working peoples’ complaints. By contrast, stealing $11B from rich people was something the authorities couldn’t ignore. They gave Andersen the death penalty, trying to teach the surviving accounting firms a lesson about what happens when you fuck with plutes.

But those other firms learned the wrong lesson: the collapse of Andersen was so disruptive that it soon became clear that the authorities would never take another giant consulting firm down, no matter how egregious its conduct was. They doubled down on crime, and then doubled down again.

It’s hard to pick a winner in the Big Four Accounting Firm Corruption Olympics, but KPMG is a strong contender, with a long history of just being monumentally inept and wrong. Back when Enron was unspooling, KPMG devoted itself to threatening people who linked to its website “without a license to do so”:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020207141547/http://chris.raettig.org/email/jnl00040.html

A couple years later, they declared war on wifi, trying to convince normies that wireless networks were an existential risk to human civilization:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2885339.stm

But there’s not much money in wifi scare stories or licenses to link. KPMG are good dialectical materialists, devoted to money over ideology, and boy did they figure out some wild ways to make money. For one thing, they figured out that they could get more accountants certified by cheating…on ethics exams:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-was-much-more-widespread-than-originally-thought-2019-06-18

KPMG’s top managers bribed regulators to give them the answer-sheets for ethics exams. What did they bribe those public employees with? Jobs at KPMG:

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2020/01/how-accountants-took-washingtons-revolving-door-to-a-criminal-extreme

There’s hardly a month that goes by without another KPMG scandal somewhere in the world, with enormous monetary and social fallout. During the lockdowns, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government outsourced the creation and maintenance of ArriveCAN (a contact tracing app for people who entered Canada) to a grifter called GC Strategies, who billed millions for their services. GC Strategies didn’t do any work — instead, they paid KPMG $1,000-$1,500 day to hire freelancers to build the app. The app itself was a catastrophic failure, and that failure didn’t just embarrass the government — it also failed to protect Canadians during a once-in-a-century global pandemic. KPMG raked off a 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

In the USA, KPMG helped Microsoft work up a radioactively illegal tax-evasion scheme. Microsoft poured the millions it saved by cheating on its taxes into dark-money operations that lobbied to defund the IRS so that KPMG and Microsoft could cook up even more illegal tax-evasion schemes:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

But KPMG doesn’t content itself with screwing over everyday people and rotting our democratic institutions — it also engages in the dangerous business of helping billionaires steal from millionaires. KPMG was the auditor that signed off on the scam “oil company” Miller Energy Partners, a fraud that operated for years thanks to KPMG’s rubber-stamp on its crooked books:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

The company was run by serial fraudsters with long rapsheets for stealing millions. They staffed their C-suite with executives from disgraced companies that had been busted for running Ponzi schemes, issuing press releases praising those execs’ “proven track records in raising capital.” KPMG ignored every red flag, ignored the hundreds of millions in fraud on the books — and when the whole thing came crashing down, the responsible KPMG partner kept his job for years, until retiring with a full and fat pension.

More recently, KPMG made millions by confidently certifying the stability of a large regional bank, assuring investors and depositors that it was managing its risk and could be trusted. The name of the client that KPMG was so bullish on will be familiar to you: Silicon Valley Bank:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kpmg-faces-scrutiny-for-audits-of-svb-and-signature-bank-42dc49dd

KPMG epitomizes the idea of Too Big To Fail and Too Big to Jail. Despite being at the center of virtually every major finance scandal, it continues to thrive and grow. Remember the Carillion bust, in which billions went up in smoke and swathes of privatized government services vanished overnight? Not only did KPMG sign off on fraudulent Carillion books, but it escaped fines for doing so — and got paid to help administer Carillion’s bankruptcy:

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/uk-watchdog-fines-kpmg-24-mln-over-carillion-regenersis-audits-2022-07-25/

Despite this, KPMG continues to find willing buyers for its services. After all, when the sector is dominated by four giant, lavishly corrupt firms, there’s not much choice in the matter:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/29/great-andersens-ghost/#mene-mene-bezzle

This is bad news for the investor class, of course, but it’s even worse news for the people who rely on the services that KPMG certifies, even as it helps grifters destroy them. Every kind of business relies on audits, from transit to aviation to day-care to eldercare.

Here’s a scary one for you: in Australia, the job of auditing residential eldercare homes’ compliance with safety and anti-abuse rules has been outsourced to KPMG. While KPMG earns a mid-sized fortune from these audits, it earns far more advising the owners of residential aged care homes on how to beat those audits:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/04/firm-performing-australian-aged-care-audit-also-charging-providers-for-expertise

KPMG says that the division that ensures the safety and dignity of elderly people is firewalled off from the division that advises companies on how to spend as little as possible on that safety and dignity — but KPMG also went to great lengths to keep the fact that it was selling services to both sides a secret.

Once the secret got out, an anonymous KPMG spokesmonster said, “When considering a request to perform an audit, we undertake a detailed process to ensure the engagement is free of conflicts.”

It’s hypothetically possible that this is true, but anyone who believes anything KPMG says is a sucker. The company’s rap-sheet goes back decades. This is, after all, a company that cheated on its ethics exams.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: Two business-suited male figures seen side on; each has a bomb for a head, and each is holding a lit lighter that has ignited the other's fuse. Each bomb is wearing a green accountant's eyeshade. In the background is a fiery mushroom cloud. They wear KPMG logos on their lapels.]

Image:

Vectorportal.com (modified) https://vectorportal.com/vector/business-deal-illustration/23215

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Inspired by an illustration by Matt Kenyon for the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/07184d86-81cf-11e2-b050-00144feabdc0

#pluralistic #too big to jail #too big to fail #elder abuse #eldercare #conflict of interest #auspol #kpmg #nursing homes #dingo babysitters #australia #auditors

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allthecanadianpolitics · 1 year

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A new Ontario law that allows hospitals to fine discharged patients $400 a day if they do not move into a nursing home not of their choosing violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, advocates allege in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The Ontario Health Coalition and the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly said the new law, the More Beds, Better Care Act, also known as Bill 7, strips away several rights of older patients.

"Bill 7 singles out a particular cohort of older, ill and very vulnerable patients to be deprived of their right to informed consent about where they will live and the health care they receive," the organizations said in the suit.

The government introduced and quickly passed Bill 7 last fall, allowing hospital placement co-ordinators to accept a spot in a long-term care home and share their health information without a patient's approval. [...]

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #Ontario #healthcare #elder care #elder abuse

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potuzzz · 5 months

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@cryptotheism FIRST PUBLIC HATER (SANS JOSEPH BRANDON)!!! #validating #enrichment #affirmations #thank you #BLESS! 🙌🌟 #invest now #kigcoin

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coochiequeens · 7 months

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"Another significant source of tension related to finances, as Ferrinho reportedly had never worked or held down a stable job and was living at home dependent on his aging parent’s resources. Ana Gomes of the Public Prosecutor’s Office told the court that the relationship was strained due to the “inertia of the defendant” in finding a job while using his parent’s income for “online shopping.” Another failed male hiding behind the TQ+ label

By Genevieve Gluck. October 6, 2023

A trans-identified male has appeared in court on charges of the brutal murder of his father and the attempted murder of his mother. Tânia Ferrinho, 43, is accused of stabbing his father seventeen times and stabbing his bedridden mother seven times, in a horrific incident that occurred in October of 2022 in Samora Correia, Portugal.

Ferrinho’s case was heard in the Santarém Court, beginning September 13, with closing arguments presented October 4. The court heard how Ferrinho’s elderly parents, Carlos and Maria, had suffered numerous instances of violence at the hands of their son, and had already taken out a court order banning him from approaching them.

Sources of the conflict between Ferrinho and his parents were said to have centered around his sex change procedures, which they disapproved of. Ferrinho began to identify as transgender in 2020, when he legally changed his name to Tânia.

Another significant source of tension related to finances, as Ferrinho reportedly had never worked or held down a stable job and was living at home dependent on his aging parent’s resources. Ana Gomes of the Public Prosecutor’s Office told the court that the relationship was strained due to the “inertia of the defendant” in finding a job while using his parent’s income for “online shopping.”

According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office Indictment Order, the brutal assault occurred after Ferrinho was named in a new domestic violence case by his parents, who were attempting to have him expelled from their apartment.

On September 26, 2022, just weeks before the crime took place, Ferrinho posted a video to his Facebook account wherein he claimed to be a victim of stalking, and made a vague comment seeming to suggest that his parents could “accuse me of prostitution as a way of keeping the house.”

On the day of the crime, October 10, Ferrinho is said to have engaged in an argument with his parents related to money. He demanded an allowance, which his parents refused to provide. Shortly after, the National Republican Guard (GNR) visited the family’s home to inform Ferrinho that another case was being filed against him for abuse at the Benavente Court. Ferrinho was already on probation for a 2021 double conviction of aggravated physical assault against his elderly parents, reported Rede Regional.

Just after law enforcement left the premises, Ferrinho began slashing his 77 year-old father repeatedly with a knife, who fled into the apartment building’s hallway before falling to the ground. He succumbed to his injuries in December while being treated at the Vila Franca de Xira Hospital.

After stabbing his father seventeen times, Ferrinho then turned on his mother, who was bedridden and in poor health, and began assaulting her with the knife. A neighbor who had heard shouting from their apartment intervened and prevented Ferrinho from murdering his mother. The neighbor later stated that Ferrinho had initially attempted to frame his father for the assault on his mother. While she was not fatally wounded by the stabbing, she would later die of illness shortly after her husband.

In the final deliberations of the case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office attempted to rationalize the murder as being the result of “the inner conflict” presented by Ferrinho’s transgender identity. Gomes stated that there is “sensitivity to understanding the inner conflict of someone who, from a young age, does not identify with the gender they were born with.”

However, Gomes further added that “[he] did not show any remorse” for the crime, and asked for a sentence which considered the gravity of the offense.

Lawyer Maria João Alves, defending, argued that the killing occurred following a series of traumatic events, including his “gender change” and the death of his older brother, which allegedly caused him to suffer from “psychotic outbursts and sometimes interruptions of consciousness.” Alves claimed that Ferrinho was in a psychotic state when he stabbed his parents.

“I have the greatest doubts that Tânia had committed this act consciously and I am certain that [he] was never helped,” Alves said. Ferrinho was “unable to control [his] impulses” at the time of the crime, the lawyer said, and requested that the Court’s sentencing take into account his personal circumstances.

The Court will deliver a sentence on October 18.

Ferrinho’s case first became known to the wider public after media reported that female prison guards had refused to conduct strip searches on him during his detention in a women’s prison. Despite retaining a male sexual organ, Ferrinho demanded to be searched by women guards at the Tires Prison Establishment.

The women employed at the prison refused, because “the procedure involved biologically seeing a person of a different sex and seeing a penis,” said the president of the Association of Heads of the Guard Corps Prison, Hermínio Barradas.

After an hour, two female guards ultimately conducted the search “under protest.”

Portugal passed a law allowing sex self-identification in 2018, but Ferrinho’s case is said to be the first known instance of a clash between female prison staff and a violent trans-identified male inmate. Reports of the incident note that the guards “fear the arrival of new transgender inmates.”

Ana Aresta, president of ILGA (Intervenção Lesbica, Gay, Bissexual, Trans e Intersexo) told the media at the time that the sex self-identification legislation was correctly implemented by prison staff. “People don’t have to pass through any kind of process of surgical affirmation to be considered men or women,” she said.

However, Barradas disagreed, and stated that the law does not require female prison guards to strip search male inmates who have not undergone genital surgery. Yet according to reports, an internal document circulated within Portugal’s prison system states that a transgender inmate must be searched “by a member of the surveillance and security service of the same gender with which the transgender person identifies” even if they retain their sexual organ.

Can any Portuguese readers tell me when the older brother died? I curious if it happened around the same time as he came out as trans

#Portugal #Tânia Ferrinho is a man #Male violence #Elder abuse #He tried to pass himself off as a victim on social media #DARVO #Two women had to search him upon entering prison under protest #Of course he wants to be in a women's prison

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