TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Auditor has released a scathing report involving the Office of Public and Professional Guardians or OPPG.
Under guardianship, a judge takes away a person’s rights and appoints someone to manage their finances and other aspects of their lives.
State lawmakers created OPPG to police guardians and protect wards under their care, like Willi Berchau, whose story prompted the creation of the watchdog agency in 2015.
Since OPPG opened, millions of tax dollars have been spent on funding the agency, even though auditors say it is failing some of Florida’s most vulnerable seniors.
“They can do whatever they want with you”
The I-Team's investigation into Florida's broken guardianship system started in 2013.
“My court-appointed guardian doesn’t allow me to leave the premises,” Willi Berchau told us when we secretly interviewed him at a church.
The 99-year-old German immigrant had been placed by his court-appointed guardian in a locked-down dementia unit where he didn’t belong.
“You see nobody. You have no contact with anybody,” Berchau said. “If you stayed there any longer, you would mentally go down. Mentally.”
Three months after our first story, a judge restored Berchau’s rights.
“The trouble is, if you have nobody behind your back, they can do whatever they want with you,” Berchau's said at a pizza party his friends threw for him on the day he was released.
In 2015, Florida lawmakers created the Office of Public and Professional Guardians, or OPPG, to protect people in guardianship from isolation, exploitation and abuse.
Former Florida Senator Jeff Brandes was one of the sponsors of the law.
“Willi’s story is what prompted it. We heard the story, and it was so compelling, and we knew that we needed to do something,” Brandes said at the time.
But a recent audit shows OPPG is failing those it is supposed to protect.
Professional guardians received 174 complaints in two years
“This is actually a follow-up audit we did. And to be honest, in some respects, it was worse the second time around,” Deputy Auditor Matthew Tracy told a State Senate committee last month, sharing results from a 33-page audit report.
The audit shows the state’s 566 professional guardians received 174 complaints.
It said OPPG “had not developed and implemented an effective monitoring tool” to make sure guardians complied with state law.
“The extent of the department's oversight of this was a self-asked questionnaire that asked basically did you comply with our requirements and how many wards did you monitor? Basically it was like grading your own test in school,” Tracy said.
The report also said OPPG didn’t promptly address serious complaints.
“People are being kept from their families. They take their money. They sell the house from underneath them,” Tracy testified.
Guardianship reform advocates Hillary Hogue and Rick Black say the report confirms what they already know.
“We will use it and we will hold it like it is a Bible to show everyone what is going on,” Hogue said.
Hogue is a member of the Florida Statewide Guardianship Improvement Task Force.
“It was just a blessing when the state auditor audited the department and came out with their 2025 report that fully condemned the office and its operations,” Black said.
Black is the founder of CEAR, a non-profit organization that advocates accountability in probate court.
The I-Team previously reported how OPPG often took years to investigate complaints.
“They go to a black hole,” Black said.
Gov. DeSantis acknowledged problems in 2019
Our reporting got Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attention in 2019.
“What troubled me about some of the issues you guys raised was obviously bad things are happening but there doesn’t seem to be anyone held accountable,” he said.
At that time, the I-Team reported OPPG had 132 open investigations.
“I think that over 130 cases and nothing has happened to anybody, that just doesn’t strike me as being acceptable,” DeSantis said.
The entire OPPG administrative staff resigned, but a year later, little had changed.
In 2020, the I-Team obtained internal documents showing a huge backlog of cases, many dating back to before the resignations.
“Every month I’m calling"
Among the cases ... complaints from Terri Kennedy about her Aunt Lille White’s guardianship.
“I never thought anything like this could have happened,” White said in a cell phone video Kennedy recorded the last time she saw her aunt.
Lillie was isolated from family after a dispute over who would inherit her fortune.
“Every month I’m calling and saying another year, another week, another month. Where’s the report?” Kennedy said.
Three years after filing a complaint, OPPG finally sent Kennedy a letter saying her allegations were substantiated, finding her Aunt Lillie’s guardian wasn’t registered and improperly billed her.
But OPPG didn’t discipline the guardian and closed the case.
“I was so angry when I got the OPPG letter,” Kennedy said.
Lillie died the next year.
“She died alone without her family knowing, and two weeks later we find out,” Kennedy said.
We uncovered that OPPG found that at least 8 other guardians broke the law but were allowed to continue serving as guardians.
“They got maybe a requirement to take a couple of continuing education classes, but you can keep the money that mysteriously disappeared,” Black said, describing how OPPG handled cases of guardians who were found to violate the Florida Guardianship statute.
Lawmakers at the hearing where the audit was presented were shocked by the auditors’ recent findings.
“The things that we're hearing in this committee are really appalling,” said Sen. Tom Wright (R-Port Orange).
“Accountability is something we owe our population,” Sen. Jay Collins (R-Tampa) said.
Advocates say unless OPPG begins to hold guardians accountable, more people like Willi Berchau will be isolated, exploited and abused.
“These are our most vulnerable members of our population. And they have almost no protections when they are in the adult guardianship system in the state of Florida,” Black said.
“I think it should be shut down and something else put in place,” Hogue said.
The Department of Elder Affairs Secretary didn’t agree to an interview
We requested an on-camera interview with the Florida Department of Elder Affairs Secretary Michelle Branham.
Her agency oversees OPPG.
We sent multiple emails and a list of topics we wanted to ask her about, but she didn’t agree to an interview.
Branham has an open invitation to sit down with us and discuss the ongoing and recurring problems at OPPG.
The previous OPPG director resigned before the audit was released.
He was the agency’s third director since it opened.
You can find out more about Florida’s broken guardianship system by checking out our years’ long series “The Price of Protection.”
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