Before he drifted into a fog of dementia brought on by a stroke, Jay Gordon lived almost anonymously in East Liberty with an elderly aunt. After she died, Mr. Gordon became a recluse in his row house along Stanton Avenue.

Few people came or went, save a handful that helped him with housecleaning and minor chores.

Then his money began to vanish.

Months after a friend intervened, using a durable power of attorney pulled off the Internet and signed at bedside, Mr. Gordon's finances would become a tangle of intrigue, a mysterious charity and an interstate test of wills as a judge attempted to force out the truth about where Jay Gordon's money had gone.

His story exemplifies the problem of what can occur when, even with the best intentions, a durable power of attorney is misapplied. His troubles began with strange checking withdrawals and culminated in a $175,000 "contribution" to a charity run by the family of the man who held power of attorney over Mr. Gordon's affairs.

Never married, Mr. Gordon saved up several hundred thousand dollars in both his pension from a career at PNC Bank and a collection of certificates of deposit.

More than $50,000 of it quietly vanished over a brief period when a man named Eric Williamson drove him to various PNC branches and helped him cash tens of thousands of dollars in checks written out simply to "cash."

Mr. Williamson, who has a record in Allegheny County for drug possession, theft of moveable property and promoting prostitution, turned up around the time Mr. Gordon's aunt died.

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr. Williamson said he had worked for Mr. Gordon's family for 22 years -- something neighbors and Mr. Gordon's former housekeeper don't recall.

Jackie Hrivnak, who kept house for Mr. Gordon and his aunt beginning sometime around 1999, said Mr. Williamson turned up around the time the aunt died.

She became alarmed two years ago when he told her to cash his certificates of deposit and put them into his checking account.

"In less than a year, that $50,000 was gone, and Jay wasn't spending it. He didn't spend any $50,000 because he wasn't even buying his medicine," she said.

Mr. Williamson helped Mr. Gordon bathe, did odd chores for him and, in trips that began intermittently and at points accelerated to once every few days -- sometimes on consecutive days -- took him to the bank where he cashed checks for amounts ranging from a few hundred to a thousand dollars.

"I gave help to him," Mr. Williamson said. "I haven't taken advantage of no one."

By August of last year Mr. Gordon was in a nursing home where a friend, James Cattley visited him. Mr. Cattley called another old friend of Mr. Gordon's, Thomas Conrad, a wealthy Florida investment counselor, who flew up to visit.

Mr. Conrad telephoned Mr. Cattley to say he had discovered that Mr. Gordon's checking account, as well as several certificates of deposit, had been wiped out. He collected the checks and went to the police.

He also logged on to an Internet site, LawDepot.com, and bought a $15 power of attorney form. Using those powers, Mr. Conrad closed out Mr. Gordon's PNC retirement account -- which totaled $238,000 -- and transferred it to a Delaware bank which, in turn, appears to have transferred the money for investment to Competitive Capital Partners. Among Competitive Capital's advisers is Thomas Conrad.

"I tied up all of Mr. Gordon's monies so that no one could touch it but me. We had no more fear of Mr. Williamson getting Mr. Gordon's money," Mr. Conrad said.

Tied up and untraceable

So "tied up" are Mr. Gordon's monies that the Allegheny County Orphans Court is now trying to figure out precisely where Mr. Conrad put them.

The Gordon retirement account became the center of litigation because in August of last year, Mr. Conrad attempted to place his friend at HCR ManorCare Health Service Center, a skilled nursing facility, in Ross.

Mr. Gordon, officials at ManorCare were told, was penniless, save for Social Security, and would need Medicaid to pay for his care.

"At the time, Mr. Conrad told us that he had no finances, no funds and that he would require assistance in filling out a [medical assistance] application," said Catherine Brennan, business manager at the nursing home.

A speaker-phone hearing was scheduled with an administrative law judge, Ms. Brennan later testified, and Mr. Conrad testified that Mr. Gordon had no finances and would need medical assistance.

A day later, ManorCare received a check for Mr. Gordon's share of a medical bill. They discovered a bank account in Florida.

Following the trail from there, they discovered Mr. Conrad had transferred nearly $238,000 to an investment house in Delaware. It was Mr. Gordon's retirement savings.

In another round of phone calls, Ms. Brennan said, Mr. Conrad suddenly remembered the retirement savings account, but said he thought it would not count against Mr. Gordon's claim for Medicaid.

"I asked him how much was left and he told me approximately -- at first he could not remember, and when we pressed him, he said about $130,000," Ms. Brennan testified. What, she asked him, had become of the other $100,000?

"He said he had invested Mr. Gordon's money in a Chinese market, and with the crash, he lost almost 40 percent of his money," she said.

Mr. Conrad denies he ever mentioned anything about a Chinese investment market. In a June interview with the Post-Gazette, he insisted he'd made money for Mr. Gordon. Yes, he said, there had been a stock market decline last year.

Whatever monies Mr. Gordon has, though, have not gone toward his costs at ManorCare. Mr. Conrad became engaged in an escalating dispute with officials there, saying he wanted Mr. Gordon out of the facility, which he said is seeking $7,700 a month for skilled care, when he had located another nursing home that would charge only $2,800.

ManorCare's lawyers were in court in May seeking an order to appoint a guardian and demand an accounting of how Mr. Conrad had handled his friend's finances. As they prepared their case, Ms. Brennan received a phone call from the Ross Police Department. Mr. Conrad had telephoned to request an escort to forcibly remove Mr. Gordon and take him to another nursing home.

Testimony in the hearing shows that Mr. Conrad had contacted several other nursing homes about taking Mr. Gordon. In each case, he told them they would need to apply for medical assistance to cover his bills.

Ed Denelsbeck, a social worker at ManorCare, told of a phone call from Mr. Conrad during the dispute over moving Mr. Conrad.

"He then accused me of interfering in Mr. Gordon's care, holding him hostage and threatened to, if he ever saw me, come to Pennsylvania and punch me in the mouth," Mr. Denelsbeck said.

Judge Frank Lucchino, after taking testimony, canceled the power of attorney, appointed Ursuline Senior Services as a special guardian for Mr. Gordon, and ordered Mr. Conrad to file a detailed accounting with the clerk of Orphans Court explaining what has become of Mr. Gordon's savings. Daniel Sautel, an attorney retained by Mr. Conrad, later petitioned the court for an extension, saying Mr. Conrad would be out of the country on business through May.

In mid-May, workers at ManorCare discovered Mr. Conrad and his wife in Mr. Gordon's room, warning him about the guardianship.

When the June 29 deadline passed, Mr. Conrad had not filed an accounting with the court. Rather, he sent a spreadsheet of several pages showing income and outflow from Mr. Gordon's accounts.

On one line, he listed $127,179.15 as "theft by extortion by Eric Williamson." He listed $2,164.90 in legal payments, dated May 5, to Mr. Sautel. In a letter to attorneys for Ursuline, Mr. Sautel said he never received and would never have cashed a check for services because the payment was dated after Mr. Conrad's power of attorney had been nullified, meaning he had no legal power to write further checks. Aside from that, Mr. Sautel also told the court that Mr. Conrad had fired him the week after the May hearing.

But the most perplexing entries were in Mr. Gordon's IRA account.

It showed $225,000 in five payments -- the first in November of last year, the last in March of this year -- listed as "Contribution to CFF Charitable Foundation."

Conrad Family Foundation

What is CFF Charitable Foundation? In a phone conversation with a reporter, Mr. Conrad refused to say, other than that it was not, as Ursuline's attorney, Deborah Liotus ventured, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

"You're getting into a lot of personal stuff that's between me and Mr. Gordon," he said. "I don't care to go into any more details."

Both Mrs. Hrivnak and Mr. Cattley said they don't recall large charitable donations by Mr. Gordon in the past. Mrs. Hrivnak said his favorite charity was Animal Friends. Mr. Cattley said it seemed implausible that Mr. Gordon, who is largely disabled and has no access to a checkbook, could have written out $175,000 in donations.

At a later hearing, a clearly unhappy Judge Lucchino refused Mr. Sautel's request to withdraw as Mr. Conrad's attorney of record if only to prevent Mr. Conrad, ensconced at his home in Naples, Fla., from slipping out of the jurisdiction of the Allegheny County court.

"There's just too much confusion," Judge Lucchino said, "and it's somebody else's money."

Three weeks later, Mr. Sautel, after sometimes tense exchanges with Mr. Conrad, drew out the details.

CFF stood for Conrad Family Foundation. Its address is the same as Mr. Conrad's.

So far, Mr. Sautel is convinced his unwilling client intended to help his friend.

"I think he acted in good faith. I think he's done what in his conscience he thinks was in the best interest of Mr. Gordon," he said.

First Published: September 3, 2007, 8:00 a.m.