When exploitation is suspected, speed determines recovery. Report to Adult Protective Services, and where funds have already moved, to law enforcement and the financial institution immediately. California’s Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act (Welfare & Institutions Code §15600 et seq.) treats financial abuse of anyone 65 or older as its own cause of action, with attorney’s fees and costs for the prevailing plaintiff and heightened remedies where the conduct rises to recklessness, oppression, fraud, or malice — and certain of those remedies survive the victim’s death, which ordinary tort claims do not. Financial institutions sit among the mandated reporters. Other states maintain analogous statutes; know your jurisdiction’s.
The litigation, though, is cleanup — not a plan. By the time a complaint is filed the money is usually spent and the abuser usually judgment-proof. The structural defenses above exist precisely because recovery after the fact so rarely works. Build the fortress while the principal can still help design it.