Utah mental health counselor sent to prison for financially abusing vulnerable mother

VERNAL — A mental health counselor has been sentenced to a term of one to 15 years in prison for a second conviction of exploiting a vulnerable adult.

The victim in both cases was his mother. Investigators say he charged her more than $15,000 for mental health services during a weeklong visit.

Mannix George Glines, 50, was ordered last week by the 8th District Court to pay over $60,000 in restitution to his mother to repay the money he took from her.

“Stealing from or abusing anyone vulnerable is abhorrent, but to couple that abuse of trust with the exploitation of a family member is truly reprehensible,” the Utah Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

Charges were filed against Glines in November 2022 by the Medicaid Fraud and Patient Abuse Division of the attorney general’s office, and he pleaded guilty to one count of financial exploitation, a second-degree felony, on Jan. 3, 2024.

In an earlier case, Glines charged his mother $15,360 for his services as a licensed clinical social worker while he went to visit her in Arizona, shortly after doctors determined she was not able to make her own medical decisions in early 2020, the charges state.

He charged her $120 per hour at 16 hours per day for eight days he spent with her over two trips, charging documents say, adding that he also took money from her for travel expenses.

The charges filed in June 2021 also say Glines’ mother agreed to help pay for a home for Glines, based on his representations to her that she would be living in the home while he cared for her.

She lived in the home from May to July in 2020, before Glines returned her to a facility she had been unhappy with after telling her he was undergoing surgery. Later, she learned there was no surgery and that she would be back at the facility indefinitely, charging documents state.

At that point, prosecutors said he had reimbursed himself more than he had paid from her accounts and had taken money that was not accounted for from her.

In the previous case, Glines pleaded guilty on Dec. 21, 2021, to one count of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult, a second-degree felony, as part of a plea deal that dismissed one other count for financial exploitation and a charge of unlawful dealing with property by a fiduciary, second-degree felonies.

Glines was ordered in June 2022 to pay $165,336 to his mother in that case. He was also sentenced to one to 15 years in prison, but that sentence was suspended in favor of 36 months of probation.