California Elder Fraud Observatory
How many elder financial-abuse allegations are reported to county Adult Protective Services agencies in California, how those reports have changed over six fiscal years, and how much of the public record is withheld by small-count suppression.
SOC 242 records allegations reported to county Adult Protective Services agencies. It does not measure confirmed or substantiated abuse and should not be interpreted as the true prevalence of elder financial exploitation.
Every California county, FY2019–20 to FY2024–25
23 no clear trend · 1 decreasing
86.7 → 124.2 per 10,000 age 65+
1,195 of 4,176 county-months
Reported allegation trend by county
Each county is classified by the direction of its own reported allegation rate over time — not by how it ranks against other counties. Select a county to open its full profile.
- Increasing34
- No clear trend23
- Decreasing1
Colours are neutral and do not indicate good or poor county performance. “No clear trend” means there was not enough statistical evidence after multiple-testing correction.
“No clear trend” means there was not enough statistical evidence after multiple-testing correction. It does not mean the county was proven to be flat.
Reported allegation rates should not be compared directly across counties. Counties differ in senior population size, APS staffing, referral pathways, and how much of their monthly data is suppressed. A trend describes change within one county over time.
Reported allegations rose across the six-year window.
The statewide midpoint rate moved from 86.7 to 124.2 reported allegations per 10,000 residents age 65+ between FY2019–20 and FY2024–25. The shaded band shows the low and high scenarios implied by suppressed monthly counts.
An increase in reported allegations can reflect greater awareness, mandated-reporter training, referral-system changes, population change, or a real change in exploitation — the data alone cannot separate these.
See all county trendsRanking counties by reported rates answers the wrong question.
Reported APS allegations measure what reaches an agency, not what happens in a community. Two counties with the same underlying exploitation can publish very different reported rates because they differ in outreach, staffing, reporting culture, senior population size, and how many months of their data are suppressed.
This Observatory therefore reports each county on its own terms: its reported rate range, the direction of change over time, and the share of its record that is withheld. County trends were estimated using monthly interval-censored Negative Binomial models with year-specific senior-population exposure. Statistical significance was corrected across all 58 county tests using the Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate procedure.
Differences between counties are signals for further inquiry — not evidence that one county has more or less elder financial abuse than another.
Counties with statistically supported increases
Counties whose upward trend survived false-discovery-rate correction across all 58 tests, ordered by estimated annual percent change in reported allegations. Ordering describes measured change over time within each county, not a comparison of reporting levels.
| County | Annual change | FY2024–25 rate (per 10,000 age 65+) | Suppressed months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mono | +51.5% | 30.5–304.7 | 30.6% |
| San Benito | +38.6% | 65.0–143.0 | 70.8% |
| Sutter | +31.5% | 151.7–162.8 | 51.4% |
| Glenn | +29.4% | 24.5–245.2 | 87.5% |
| Tulare | +21.4% | 150.6 | 8.3% |
| Yolo | +20.9% | 127.9 | 15.3% |
| Tuolumne | +19.2% | 95.2–112.8 | 45.8% |
| Calaveras | +18.3% | 62.9–102.8 | 83.3% |