Elder Financial Abuse in California by County (2026): Adult Protective Services Data for All 58 Counties

By Eric Ridley, attorney, Ridley Law. Updated September 2026.

This page reports Adult Protective Services (APS) data on elder financial abuse for all 58 California counties, built from the state’s own raw monthly county files. Every figure in the table links to its primary source. We review and refresh this page as California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and Department of Finance (DOF) release new data, and at least once a year.

Cite this page: Ridley Law, “Elder Financial Abuse in California by County (2026): Adult Protective Services Data for All 58 Counties,” ridleylawoffices.com/elder-financial-abuse-california-by-county/, September 2026.

Key findings

• In federal fiscal year 2023-24 (October 2023 through September 2024), California county APS agencies received 287,698 reports of suspected abuse of elders and dependent adults and recorded 68,517 individual allegations of financial abuse, according to CDSS’s own statewide row in the SOC 242 statistical report.
• Of those 68,517 statewide allegations, CDSS’s own published statewide figures show 28,370, or 41.4%, were confirmed. CDSS does not publish a confirmed count broken out by county without suppressing most of them, so this confirmed figure is reported only at the statewide level, not by county.
• CDSS suppresses a county’s monthly figures when a count is small enough to risk identifying a person, and some counties did not submit a report for every month. Because of that, a published, unsuppressed annual total of financial abuse allegations is available for 29 of the 58 counties. The other 29 show as suppressed or incomplete in the table below.
• Among counties with a published allegations total and a population age 65 and older of at least 20,000 (28 counties; smaller counties are excluded here because their population base is too small for a stable rate), Placer County has the highest rate at 172.1 financial abuse allegations per 10,000 residents 65 and older, and Contra Costa County has the lowest at 55.7. Counties with suppressed or incomplete data are excluded from this comparison, not assumed to be high or low.
• Statewide, California’s population age 65 and older was 6,493,236 in 2024, according to DOF’s Report P-2B population projections.
• In a separate reporting system, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 22,157 California complainants age 60 and older in 2025, with $1,403,975,911 in reported losses, the highest of any state, according to the 2025 IC3 Annual Report. That figure covers internet-based fraud complaints, not APS abuse allegations, and the two data sets should not be added together.

Adult protective services data by county, FFY 2023-24

Reports received counts every call or referral alleging abuse of an elder or dependent adult (CDSS Item 7). Financial abuse allegations counts individual allegations, not victims or cases, with a finding of unfounded, inconclusive, or confirmed (CDSS Item 19h, Total). This page does not show a county-level confirmed count: CDSS suppresses the confirmed-elder and confirmed-dependent-adult findings that make up that number in almost every county, and we do not compute around that suppression, so a county-level confirmed figure is not shown at all. Population 65 and older is DOF’s 2024 estimate and is the best available denominator, though APS also serves dependent adults age 18 to 64, so the rate is an indicator of scale, not a precise victimization rate. Where CDSS suppresses a small count in any of the twelve months needed for an annual total, or a county did not submit a report for one or more months, that cell reads “Suppressed” or “Incomplete” rather than a number. See Methodology for how each figure was built and why.

County	Reports received	Financial abuse allegations	Population 65+	Allegations per 10,000 (65+)	Source
Alameda	8,279	2,043	271,021	75.4	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Alpine	Suppressed	0	356	0.0	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Amador	486	Suppressed	11,762	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Butte	2,381	466	36,268	128.5	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Calaveras	576	Suppressed	13,902	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Colusa	Suppressed	Suppressed	3,470	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Contra Costa	7,664	1,215	218,020	55.7	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Del Norte	295	Suppressed	5,453	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
El Dorado	1,923	328	47,753	68.7	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Fresno	Incomplete	Incomplete	130,110	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Glenn	289	Suppressed	4,848	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Humboldt	1,495	Suppressed	25,264	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Imperial	1,211	Suppressed	27,810	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Inyo	Incomplete	Incomplete	5,050	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Kern	7,399	1,508	106,448	141.7	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Kings	Incomplete	Incomplete	15,248	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Lake	695	Suppressed	16,273	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Lassen	255	Suppressed	4,722	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Los Angeles	69,965	17,508	1,640,718	106.7	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Madera	1,154	314	24,050	130.6	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Marin	2,473	494	65,902	75.0	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Mariposa	Incomplete	Incomplete	5,459	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Mendocino	1,352	Suppressed	22,455	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Merced	2,115	Suppressed	33,523	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Modoc	Suppressed	Suppressed	2,249	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Mono	Suppressed	Suppressed	2,736	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Monterey	3,281	931	68,131	136.6	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Napa	Incomplete	Incomplete	31,345	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Nevada	806	Suppressed	31,563	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Orange	19,019	4,614	547,003	84.4	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Placer	3,826	1,520	88,316	172.1	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Plumas	Suppressed	Suppressed	6,469	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Riverside	20,633	5,190	397,686	130.5	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Sacramento	10,706	1,797	246,907	72.8	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Benito	Incomplete	Incomplete	9,271	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Bernardino	14,530	3,809	288,105	132.2	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Diego	29,231	8,805	521,723	168.8	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Francisco	11,188	2,227	151,580	146.9	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Joaquin	3,857	677	109,749	61.7	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Luis Obispo	3,932	719	61,690	116.6	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
San Mateo	3,297	1,044	146,963	71.0	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Santa Barbara	4,498	1,017	72,456	140.4	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Santa Clara	9,595	3,281	307,657	106.6	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Santa Cruz	2,873	447	50,453	88.6	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Shasta	2,878	581	38,486	151.0	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Sierra	Incomplete	Incomplete	1,094	Incomplete	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Siskiyou	789	Suppressed	12,188	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Solano	2,763	549	82,228	66.8	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Sonoma	6,719	1,371	107,154	127.9	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Stanislaus	2,986	678	76,609	88.5	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Sutter	714	Suppressed	16,020	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Tehama	978	Suppressed	13,009	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Trinity	Suppressed	Suppressed	4,503	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Tulare	2,721	660	56,417	117.0	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Tuolumne	460	Suppressed	15,578	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Ventura	7,663	1,482	150,650	98.4	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Yolo	1,444	Suppressed	30,365	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B
Yuba	569	Suppressed	10,998	Suppressed	CDSS SOC 242; DOF P-2B

National context: internet and phone fraud against older Californians

The APS numbers above cover reports and investigations handled by county social services agencies under state law. A separate federal system, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), tracks internet-enabled fraud reported directly by victims or their families. In 2025, IC3 received 22,157 complaints from California residents age 60 and older, the most of any state, with $1,403,975,911 in reported losses, also the highest in the country. See the 2025 IC3 Annual Report. IC3 complaints are not filtered through APS and are not counted in the county table above. Someone can appear in both data sets, in one, or in neither.

How to report suspected abuse in California

Anyone who suspects financial abuse of an elder or dependent adult in California can report it to that person’s county Adult Protective Services (APS) office. CDSS publishes a county-by-county APS contact list from its Adult Protective Services page, which also states that a report may be made to local law enforcement. If someone is in immediate physical danger, call 911.

California law also requires certain people to report suspected abuse. Under Welfare and Institutions Code section 15630, a person who has assumed responsibility for the care or custody of an elder or dependent adult, including care custodians, health practitioners, clergy members, and county APS or law enforcement employees, is a mandated reporter who must report a known or reasonably suspected instance of abuse, including financial abuse. Welfare and Institutions Code section 15630.1 separately makes officers and employees of banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions mandated reporters of suspected financial abuse when they have direct contact with an elder or dependent adult client or review that client’s financial records or transactions. This is a general summary. A mandated reporter should confirm the reporting timeline and method that applies to their specific role under the statute.

What this means in California

California defines “financial abuse” of an elder or dependent adult in Welfare and Institutions Code section 15610.30. It occurs when a person or entity takes, secretes, appropriates, obtains, or retains an elder or dependent adult’s real or personal property for a wrongful use or with intent to defraud, or does so through undue influence. An “elder” under this chapter is a person 65 or older who resides in California.

Separately, Probate Code section 21380 creates a presumption that a donative transfer in a will, trust, or similar instrument is the product of fraud or undue influence when the transfer benefits the person who drafted the instrument, a care custodian of a dependent adult who benefits during or shortly after the caregiving relationship, or certain people closely related to a drafter or care custodian. The presumption shifts the burden to the beneficiary to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that the transfer was not the product of fraud or undue influence, and in some circumstances the presumption cannot be rebutted at all. Financial abuse and undue influence often appear together in a trust or estate dispute, but they are separate legal theories with separate elements.

These issues come up often in California trust contests, in Medi-Cal and incapacity planning, and in decisions about whether a conservatorship is necessary to protect someone from ongoing abuse. See our pages on financial elder abuse and trust contests, Medi-Cal planning and elder law, avoiding conservatorship in California, and the glossary entries on undue influence and durable power of attorney, a document financial abusers sometimes misuse.

Related pages on this site

• Financial Elder Abuse and Trust Contests in California
• Medi-Cal Planning and Elder Law in California
• Avoiding Conservatorship in California
• The Presumption of Undue Influence Under Probate Code § 21380
• Undue Influence: Definition and How It Works in California
• Durable Power of Attorney: Definition and How It Works in California
• California Probate Statistics (2026)

Methodology

APS figures come from CDSS’s SOC 242 Adult Protective Services and County Services Block Grant Monthly Statistical Report, raw county file for federal fiscal year 2023-24 (October 2023 through September 2024), downloaded September 2026 from the CDSS SOC 242 data page. We used FFY 2023-24 rather than FFY 2024-25 because neither file is complete for all counties in all 12 months, and FFY 2024-25 is not more complete. “Reports received” is CDSS Item 7, “unduplicated reports of alleged abuse received during the month” (Data Dictionary Cell 27). “Financial abuse allegations” is CDSS Item 19h, “Total” (Data Dictionary Cell 119), which counts individual allegations with a finding of unfounded, inconclusive, or confirmed. We summed each item across the 12 months in the fiscal year ourselves, in Python, using the pandas/openpyxl-based script kept with this page’s source files.

This page does not show a county-level “confirmed financial abuse allegations” figure. CDSS’s Item 19h breaks financial abuse allegations down by finding, including “Confirmed: Elder” and “Confirmed: Dependent Adult” (Cells 117 and 118), but CDSS suppresses Cell 118 in almost every county-month, because dependent-adult confirmed counts are small even in large counties, protecting the small number of people those counts could otherwise identify. We do not compute a substitute confirmed figure from other published cells (for example, Total minus Unfounded minus Inconclusive) to work around that suppression, even where the arithmetic would be exact, because CDSS suppresses those counts on purpose. The only confirmed figure on this page is CDSS’s own published statewide total, reported once, in Key Findings, and clearly labeled as the statewide row.

A county’s cell reads “Incomplete” rather than “Suppressed” when CDSS’s own release notes show that county did not submit a report for one or more months in the fiscal year (Fresno, Inyo, Kings, Mariposa, Napa, San Benito, and Sierra each missed at least one month). It reads “Suppressed” when the county reported every month but CDSS redacted at least one month’s count as “*” under its data de-identification guidelines, referenced on the SOC 242 page. Neither case is back-filled with an estimate, a zero, or a figure computed from other cells.

We checked our county sums against CDSS’s own “Statewide” row in the same file, which is fully reported with no suppressed months. The statewide totals used in Key Findings (287,698 reports, 68,517 total financial abuse allegations, 28,370 confirmed, 41.4%) are CDSS’s own Statewide row, summed by us across its 12 months: reports and the Item 19h Total the same way as the county columns, and the confirmed figure as the sum of the Statewide row’s own published “Confirmed: Elder” and “Confirmed: Dependent Adult” monthly values, neither of which is suppressed at the statewide level. Summing only the 58 individual county rows produces smaller totals for reports and total allegations (281,963 reports, a difference of 5,735; 65,275 total allegations from the 29 counties with a full, unsuppressed Item 19h Total, a difference of 3,242), because suppressed and incomplete counties are excluded from a county-level sum. This gap is the data suppression and non-reporting described above, not an error in our arithmetic. We do not sum a county-level confirmed figure at all, for the reasons above.

Population age 65 and older by county is the California Department of Finance’s Report P-2B, “Total Population Projections for California Counties,” Vintage 2026 (2026.03.13), 2024 Baseline, from the DOF Demographic Research Unit projections page. We summed DOF’s single-year-of-age rows for ages 65 through 110, filtered to “ALL SEXES” and “ALL RACES,” for each county. The sum across all 58 counties (6,493,236) matches DOF’s own statewide total in Report P-1B exactly.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center figures (22,157 California complainants age 60 and older, $1,403,975,911 in losses) are taken directly from the “Overall State Statistics for 60+” tables in the 2025 IC3 Annual Report and were confirmed against that PDF this session.

We excluded a proposed statewide victim-count figure that could not be tied to a single, dated primary source, and we did not attempt to estimate any suppressed county’s confirmed count. Next scheduled review: September 2027, or sooner if CDSS publishes a more complete fiscal year. To report an error on this page, email eric@ridleylawoffices.com.