Janice Mantia charged into elderly Bibianna Bach's life like a savior.

Mantia, then a state-paid watchdog for elderly abuse, went to court in 1992 to win control of Bach's finances, saying the childless Tamarac widow was too ill to pay her own bills.

But 17 months after Mantia entered Bach's life -- and began paying herself $35 an hour with the old woman's money -- the 78-year-old widow died broke, malnourished and bedeviled by bed sores.

"She was 5-foot-2 and 66 pounds," said Dr. Raul Vila of the Broward Medical Examiner's Office, who performed the autopsy in August. "She looked like she came from a death camp."

The state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, after investigating Mantia, alleged that she neglected Bach and exploited three wards of the private guardianship business she began while moonlighting from her full-time state job. Mantia is challenging the findings through a state appeals process.

"I don't feel I've done anything wrong," said Mantia, 51. "I happen to care a lot about these people. They are important to me. They are important to my life, and not for the income."

Court records show that Mantia gave questionable care to some wards and charged people -- who had lost their legal right to contest her bills -- thousands of dollars for services they could have bought at less cost elsewhere.

Records also show that the court system supposed to protect vulnerable wards and to police South Florida's burgeoning private guardianship industry has failed in some of Mantia's cases:

* One of Mantia's wards required surgery because she left one or more tampons inserted weeks after HRS workers warned Mantia that the woman had a strange odor and discharge and needed a gynecological exam.

* Another ward, an aging Fort Lauderdale woman, has been trapped in a Margate retirement home, stripped of her legal rights and cut off from her money for more than two years -- even though she is now sober and sane and should have most of her rights restored, according to her doctor and experts who have evaluated her for the court.

* Mantia's company billed a Sunrise family three times for the same court hearing and charged a retarded man $210 to take him fishing. She charged a Margate woman $122.50 to visit and clean her refrigerator, and charged two elderly wards a total of $900 for staying with them 15 hours during Hurricane Andrew, court records show.

While Mantia denies neglecting or financially exploiting her wards, she acknowledges "sloppy bookkeeping" and concedes she does not have documentation to prove she has worked all the hours for which she has billed her wards.

Broward Circuit Court Judge W. Clayton Johnson, who signed some court orders authorizing Mantia to charge wards questionable fees, said last week that he would not have if he had read her bills more carefully.

"I have to try to glance at them," said Johnson, who heads the court's probate division, where two full-time judges, a part-time judge and two general masters are responsible for monitoring bills in about 5,000 open guardianship cases. "We do not have enough help to watch this stuff. We have to presume people are honest."

But last year, when one family complained that Mantia was withdrawing too much from their relatives' accounts, Johnson said the complaints were unwarranted -- and slapped the complainers with a court order barring them from criticizing Mantia.