F'ing Scammers!

[woodchucker]

sadly , older people are extremely vulnerable. My mom was always wary of stuff. But she easily fell victim to a scam that the trading company pulled on her, moving her money from one stock to another and collecting the commission, until they wiped her out. That was a famous company, and they argued that she signed on and allowed it.. so scammers can be real companies , not just scum of the earth... in this case the scum of the earth was a major company that pushed their people to do that.

 

[WobblyHand]

It's not just 90 year olds that they target. I get 4-5 texts, 3-4 calls, and 20-30 emails a day with efforts to separate me from my money, somehow. It all goes into the bit bucket. Shoot, I even get unsolicited offers from realtors in the mail. It's all part of the fleece the older generation thing. My mother used to get low ball offers on her house. Fortunately she never agreed to them. As we age, we tend to think kindly upon those who seem to offer to help us. But some only want to help themselves. Have to be vigilant - the con artists never rest. Sad state of affairs really.

 

[PNW_Guy]

I feel for you, and know how hard that is. Be aware that you can now reproduce a voice pretty easily - like your dad's "grandson" can call and ask for money and it'll be a convincing voice.

My mom's in her mid 70's and dad is a bit over 80. I've been their tech support since the 80's. I've tried to guide and teach them, as well as keep them up to date.

I'm so damn proud of my mom. Every so often she'll get an email and ask me to look at it. It's always "this doesn't seem right, can you take a look". And it's always a scam of some sort. She feels bad for asking but I try and assure her that it's much better for me to spend 5 minutes showing her why it's a scam than trying to fix it later. She got an email from a friend who was asking for gift cards (for some legit sounding reason). She thought it was odd, asked me and email the friend's wife. Turns out somebody got his email password and was sending requests for money, but had changed the return address on the email to something very similar to the real one.

It's about time to take dad's keys and bank access away, but that'll be a hell of a fight. He'll probably end up shooting me or himself [mostly joking here].

 

[Nutfarmer]

It’s hard to protect older people. We had to intercept mom’s mail and throw out all of the nonprofits trying to part her from her money. She let a supposed friend move in to help her with the house. Brother and I had to physically remove them. Not being close by would make it even harder to protect them. Good luck.

 

[Reddinr]

My mother in law recently went through an experience like that and about two months later my sister in law did. Neither is particularly gullible, well maybe the sister in law...

The MIL has memory issues and was convinced by internet slight-of-hand that her bank's "security representative" mistakenly put $15000 into her account when trying to "help her". She ended up attempting to ship by UPS $15,000 in cash (insured) to an address on the east coast. My wife happened by to take her to lunch and figured out something was up. They were able to get to UPS and get the package but it was close. Ended well. The bank, for some reason let a 92 year old take a big bag of cash (300 x $50 bills) from her account without their alarm bells going off.

My SIL lost about $5K. It's gone. She's aware of how they did it and feels terribly embarrassed. She was just trusting to her detriment. In a separate posting, I'll list the steps we took to better protect my MIL.

 

[Eddyde]

That they prey on the elderly should have them hung from a post.

There are days I think making it legal to hunt them for sport would be interesting,

This is exactly how I feel about these scumbags. Cons are one of the lowest forms of crime, they rob the victims not only of their money but their dignity as well.
With so many victims, how more isn't being done to stop this is baffling.

 

[C-Bag]

Sadly swindling, and con jobs on the elderly are not uncommon.

Most of this stuff I’d never heard of before. But it was crazy to see it all unfold just like on the Rober vid. They all work off a script and are as pushy as any salesman I’ve ever seen.

 

[Eddyde]

You and your wife will need to take over his finances and change his phone number. My mom has nothing and they've tried to get her as well.

It may take an intervention with other relatives, or even a court order but don't let up. Where in California is he?

John

He's in Costa Mesa, we do have peeps there trying to look after him but he's so stubborn and convinced there is a chance it's real...

 

[Reddinr]

What we did to protect my MIL from "next time"

I inspected her computer and found five different remote access programs that were installed. I removed them and removed a suspect program that had no purpose being there. We reviewed her accounts to see if there was other strange activity. Then, taking it a step further:

Replaced her Windows Home with Windows Pro. Windows Home has limited ability to lock itself down. Thanks Microsoft.

Set up a user account for her with only necessary functionality. Set it up to disable installation of new software, which means no more "remote" software.

Created a cheat card that is taped to the laptop. It has a short list of what to do with any call, text or email. Essentially: Hang up or ignore.

Moved her to a new email account and discontinued the old one. She was getting hundreds of emails daily, scam, spam you name it.

We review her various accounts about once a week. Thankfully she gave my wife permission to do that.

Sat through a couple of the shorter Kitboga youtube videos with her just to try to embed a little distrust and maybe give her some understanding of how things happened. She said she felt better after watching because some of the experience was just like what she could recall.

At some point, maybe a year or so, we will need to take control of her accounts/bills etc. because she won't be able to fend off the scammers or remember to pay bills etc. It sounds to me like your father-in-law is already to that point. Best of luck to you.

 

[Eddyde]

Update: My wife is flying back out there in a couple of days and will stay until we get it resolved, at least to the point where the scammers can't completely wipe out dads finances. His best friend is a lawyer, he's going to try to set up a conservatorship/trust. It's not going to be easy but it must be done.
Thanks for everyones responses, support so far, it really means a lot and is very much appreciated.