Community groups, Montreal police, and victims are raising awareness about the abuse of the elderly, and how it pays to be suspicious of people who are overly friendly.

Police are telling the story of Veronika Piela and how she had been taken advantage of, but managed to convince authorities otherwise.

Piela's case is still before the courts after first coming to light in February 2014, when the 92-year-old woman was spotted heading down a road in Cote des Neiges without a coat.

Police officers picked her up and Piela said she was trying to escape a horrible situation.

Piela said she had been denied all contact with the outside world.

Officers brought her home and noted that the woman who claimed to be Piela's niece, had been arrested two weeks earlier while breaking into Piela's home.

A little more digging turned up that Piela had been declared mentally incompetent by a legal clerk and her hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings had been put in trust with the caregiver being one of the mandataries.

Piela is still fighting to regain everything that has been taken from her and her remaining funds have been placed under the control of Quebec's Public Curator.

Since then, a social worker who saw Piela has had her licence suspended and the doctor who declared Piela incompetent is being investigated, as is Piela’s lawyer.

Need to be suspicious

Police officer Elizabeth Kraska said Piela's situation illustrates how people need to be more suspicious in certain situations.

"When somebody knows that that person is all alone, that's when they start getting a little bit friendly and sometimes too friendly," said Kraska.

"That's when they find out that if that person has some kind of a little savings or property, that's when they like to take advantage of them and start to prepare all kinds of documents and for them not even knowing exactly what they're signing."

In Piela's case the courts will have to determine if she actually signed some documents surrendering control, or if her signature was forged.

A special unit of the Montreal police force that deals with mistreatment of the elderly has spent several years investigating cases of elderly abuse and collecting resources to help people through the judicial process.

It has created an intervention model for front-line officers that includes ways to prevent, detect, and respond to suspected elderly abuse.

The pilot project is being implemented at three police stations in Montreal and if successful will be rolled out to other stations across the island.