Wealth is governed carefully. The people with access to it often aren't.
In April 2026, Catalina Corona, a personal assistant in New York, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for stealing nearly $10 million from her elderly employers. She didn't need to hack a system or forge an identity. She had the family's trust and the access that came with it.
Families, athletes, and entertainers with significant wealth often govern their assets with care: investments go through committees, and accounts are audited. The people closest to them, the ones who hold the keys, are trusted on the strength of the relationship, and that trust can go years without a second look.
By inner circle, we mean anyone you have given access to your money or your private life, from household staff to the advisors who manage your accounts.
What 37 Cases Show: Risk Follows Trust
The first phase of ongoing research at Eunomia studied 37 documented cases of fraud and theft drawn from court records and public reporting. Again and again, the risk followed trust.
Twenty-one of the cases involved impersonation. In 14 of those, the fraudster posed as someone the victim already trusted, from a company executive to the victim's own bank. In the other 16 cases, the people involved were already inside the circle and had no one to impersonate.
Many came to light only when someone outside the relationship looked, and some took years to surface.
The Same Risk in Sports and Entertainment
These cases follow the pattern in our research: the loss came from someone already inside the circle. Fame did not change that.
Baseball star Shohei Ohtani's longtime interpreter, who also served as his de facto manager, was charged in 2024 with stealing nearly $17 million from Ohtani's bank account. Prosecutors said that starting in late 2021, he switched the account's contact details to his own phone and email and impersonated Ohtani on calls with the bank to approve transfers. He was sentenced in 2025 to nearly five years in prison.
Singer Alanis Morissette's business manager, who handled her income and investments, admitted to stealing nearly $5 million from her between 2010 and 2014, along with more from other clients. He was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017. The theft came to light after Morissette hired a new money manager.
The pattern hasn't faded. In March 2026, a federal jury convicted Darryl Cohen, a former Morgan Stanley financial advisor, of defrauding three NBA players, including Jrue Holiday and Chandler Parsons, of more than $5 million. Prosecutors said he took advantage of his advisory and fiduciary relationships with the players, selling them life insurance policies at undisclosed markups of more than 200 percent and moving their money without authorization, including to build a gym in his own backyard. Then-U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Cohen "built trust with successful pro athletes—then betrayed it."
These positions were legitimate and granted on trust.
Why the Inner Circle Goes Unchecked
When a family hires an investment manager, there is diligence and a mandate. When it hands an assistant the passwords, there is often little formal process. The relationship stands in for the vetting.
Over time, access expands by default rather than by decision. We call this access drift. The person who pays the bills starts reconciling the statements. The advisor who moves the money prepares the report on it. Controls may exist, but trust is what exempts the people closest to the family from them. That makes it a governance problem.
In several investigations I led as a chief compliance officer, the person behind the loss was the one few thought to check. In a company, one person moving the money and reporting on it is a segregation-of-duties failure. In a household, the same arrangement looks like loyalty.
Fast wealth can sharpen the risk. After an exit or a first contract, new advisors, staff, and relatives gain access almost at once.
Aging brings its own risk. Corona's employers were elderly, and in our sample, elder financial exploitation ran through the people closest to the older adult, including a son with power of attorney. The pattern reaches well beyond our research. When the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reviewed a year of bank filings flagging about $27 billion in suspected elder financial exploitation, FinCEN found that "adult children were the most frequent elder theft-related perpetrators."
As a parent ages, the inner circle changes at the moment oversight matters most. A home health aide joins the household. An adult child takes over the bills or receives power of attorney. The parent who once read the statements closely stops reading them, and that parent was often the first line of oversight. These changes are reasonable on their own. Together, they hand control to new people while the review that once checked them fades. For a family, this is a succession question as much as a care question: who holds access once a parent steps back, and who checks them?
Five Questions to Ask About Your Inner Circle
These questions are not a test of loyalty. They offer a proactive way to manage sensitive relationships on your own terms, by confirming safeguards that are easy to assume and harder to verify. Ask them privately once a year, and again whenever someone joins or leaves the circle or a parent steps back.
1. Who has access you couldn't list from memory? Think accounts, passwords, devices, and signing authority, across your household, your business, and your advisors.
2. When did anyone last review that access? If the honest answer is "when we granted it," start there.
3. Who would notice if money moved quietly? If the only person watching an account also has access to it, the account has no independent oversight.
4. Who outside the relationship ever looks? In several of the cases we studied, a fresh set of eyes is what surfaced the problem.
5. Could someone on your staff raise a concern about a person you trust without risking their job? The people who notice first may be the least able to say so.
A Transfer of Trust Is a Governance Decision™
When Corona pleaded guilty, Joseph Nocella, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said his office would keep pursuing "those who exploit positions of trust for personal gain." That phrase carries legal weight. Federal sentencing guidelines add prison time when a defendant abused "a position of public or private trust" to commit or conceal a crime, and courts have applied that rule to roles as different as a bank executive and a babysitter.
Prosecutors recognize a position of trust after the loss. Governance can recognize it before.
Granting someone access is a decision, even when it doesn't feel like one. Families can keep trusting the people they rely on. What changes is the process: make each grant deliberately, review it on a schedule, and have it checked by someone other than the person who holds it.
Many families review their portfolios every quarter. Fewer review the people with access to them. Eunomia advises on trust: who holds it, how far it reaches, and who oversees it. If you advise families, athletes, entertainers, or aging clients, these questions are worth raising with them before a loss forces the conversation.
The inner circle forms before the governance does. A transfer of trust is a governance decision™.
Eunomia's research summary, "The Vulnerability Gap," covers the first 37 cases in more detail, including one test that applies across all of them.
Tiffany A. Archer, Esq., is President and Founder of Eunomia Risk Advisory, with more than 25 years of experience across finance, law, and compliance. She is an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School and an Adjunct Lecturer at NYU.