Family members of senior citizens at the center of a controversy surrounding the Nevada guardianship system say their pleas for help to then-attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto, now a U.S. Senate candidate, were ignored for political reasons.

The family members accuse Jared Shafer, a former Clark County, Nev., official who runs a private guardianship firm, of bilking family members' estates of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Shafer brushed off threats of legal action by invoking his connections to Masto, the Democratic candidate for Senate hoping to replace Harry Reid.

"Jared Shafer knew that Masto would never take a report" due to her family's ties to Shafer, said Charles Pascal, whose mother-in-law died under Shafer's care, in a Tuesday interview. "Why can these guardians do these things? They can do these things because they believe that no action will be taken."