A Nebraska woman charged with theft remained the court-appointed guardian for dozens of vulnerable people more than a month after her arrest, according to a review of court records.
Becky Stamp, who has been appointed as a court guardian across 18 counties, was arrested in early November and charged with three felonies, including abuse of a vulnerable adult, after court documents alleged she took money from accounts tied to people under guardianship. The documents allege Stamp racked up more than $21,000 in charges at shops across York using an account belonging to a man deemed incapable of making his own financial decisions.
After the charges were filed, some Nebraska judges moved quickly to suspend or revoke Stamp’s authority and others ordered reviews of her financial filings. But more than a month after her arrest, Stamp still served as the guardian for at least 25 vulnerable Nebraskans, the Flatwater Free Press review reported, drawing on 42 cases in which she had been appointed. The review said Stamp maintained authority over living arrangements and medical care and, in most cases, finances.
Advocates cited the case as evidence of continuing gaps in oversight for people placed under guardianships or conservatorships in Nebraska. Amy Miller, a staff attorney at Disability Rights Nebraska, said the state needs “more oversight for guardians” and framed the situation as part of a broader failure to protect the roughly 10,000-plus Nebraskans placed under such arrangements, often due to old age, disabilities or injuries.
The report said the full scope of Stamp’s alleged conduct remains unclear. A state official told the Supreme Court Commission on Guardianships and Conservatorships that when Stamp was arrested, she served as the guardian and/or Social Security payee — a federal designation that can allow access to clients’ government benefits — in approximately 77 cases, according to meeting minutes provided by the judicial branch. A search warrant filed in York County accused Stamp of moving money from the bank accounts of four additional Nebraskans, and a spokesman for the Nebraska State Patrol said the agency was looking for additional victims.
In one example described through court filings, the alleged financial abuse did not stop when Stamp was charged. In Merrick County, a judge waived required credit and criminal-history checks in October to appoint Stamp as guardian for a 46-year-old man diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The review said that in December, a court filing alleged Stamp wrote an $810 check to herself from the man’s account. The 46-year-old told his attorney that Stamp cashed the check and kept $400 for herself on Dec. 5, nearly a month after her arrest and at least three weeks after courts were notified of the charges, according to the filing and other public records.
Miller said it would be foolish for someone facing a criminal charge to continue acting in a wrongful way, but noted the legal distinction that Stamp could still hold guardianship power until it was revoked by a judge. Through her attorney, Stamp declined to comment.
Corey Steel, the Nebraska court administrator, said the judicial branch has “informal mechanisms” to alert judges to potential issues so that judges can determine next steps. Steel also said there is nothing in state law that requires a guardian’s removal in any case and described guardianship decisions as depending on the facts of each individual matter. “A lot of it is judicial discretion,” Steel said, adding that judges must determine whether someone is fit based on the allegations brought forward.
The controversy has renewed attention on the state’s guardianship structure, which was overhauled after a 2013 state audit found that a Bayard woman assigned to more than 600 guardianship cases had stolen thousands from unknowing clients. Lawmakers created the Office of Public Guardian as a last resort for people without a family member able or willing to take the role. Under that law, public guardians in the office were barred from taking more than 20 cases at a time and were required to visit clients once a month, while the law placed no similar restrictions on private, for-profit guardians like Stamp.
State Auditor Mike Foley, whose probe helped drive changes after 2013, said he thought Nebraska had made great progress but suggested the system still had not been fully fixed. Foley said state law already required background checks and regular reports, but that reports sometimes went unfilled, and Disability Rights Nebraska later raised renewed concerns in 2024 about whether county court staff had enough resources to ensure guardians filed required annual reports and to review them for red flags.
The judicial branch, according to minutes from a November 2024 commission meeting, said the report highlighted areas being worked on and that it was “really drilling down” on internal system issues. Steel said the commission proactively sought a change to state law that last year authorized the State Patrol to run national criminal-history checks on those applying to serve as guardians, rather than limiting checks to state-level records. State Sen. Wendy DeBoer, who sponsored the 2025 law nationalizing those checks, said she was considering further legislation this year to limit caseloads for private guardians, while cautioning that overly burdensome paperwork could discourage people from seeking to serve as guardians.
Despite the charges, court filings described ongoing court appointments for Stamp. The report said Stamp was appointed as guardian in at least 14 new cases in 2025 even while she was removed from other cases for failing to file financial reports or neglecting people she had been assigned to care for. The filings also described at least three lawsuits filed by creditors in 2024, including a Lancaster County suit seeking $10,529 filed in April that the couple repaid quickly, with the alleged theft described as beginning the same month as that suit.
In October 2024, the report said a judge in Red Willow County revoked Stamp’s guardianship after a handwritten filing from a ward’s mother alleged Stamp had “almost zero communication” with her son over four months. And in July 2025, the report said judges in three counties terminated Stamp’s authority within a two-day span for failing to file annual financial reports or to appear at court hearings over missing documents, which are the annual submissions guardians make to account for their work.
Still, in some instances, court oversight moved more slowly. The report said one judge left Stamp’s guardianship in place until mid-December despite an annual financial report that was 20 months overdue, and another kept her authority intact after a 22-year-old asked for a new guardian, writing that her current guardian “doesn’t check up on me or talk to me” and “doesn’t help me with anything.” In another case, the report said Stamp remained guardian for a 55-year-old even after a judge ordered reimbursement of $473 for fees and mileage she had overpaid to herself from the woman’s account.
This story was originally published by the Flatwater Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.