Estates without a vigilant heir and a protective judge are always a temptation as a chance for insiders to loot. Years ago, before the rules were tightened, my father was astonished as a chief circuit judge to see the lush fees that estates routinely generated for lawyers, appraisers, and administrators. A handful of eager judges always jockeyed to be assigned to the probate division, so my father’s solution was to assign honest new judges and rotate them out every year.
what you say it true about the Public Administrator’s office: it’s the place where crooks are most likely to rob stuff like kids in a candy store and probably least likely to be caught ... OTOH, even the honest ones aren’t terribly motivated to get top dollar when they have tons of stuff to dispose of quickly, and folks that are networked in can end up with lots of stuff that are real bargains ...