My mom almost certainly has dementia (attempts to get it diagnosed have been, if not a serious matter, comically unsuccessful), and she would almost certainly turn over control to me if I asked her to. My father almost certainly does not have dementia or Alzheimers, and is very likely to fight me on it and do so in insulting ways. It kind of comes down to, would I rather use the legal process and totally ruin the relationship and save him from being vulnerable to something like this again, or keep the relationship and try my best to get them to take advice/help? I assume, “He already gave away all his liquid assets to a scammer,” would go a long way in this process. But at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s worth the strain on the relationship to go that route.
Thanks for sharing, sorry this happened to them. Probably a good reminder for me to talk to my parents about this sort of thing and make sure they’re aware of the kinds of scams that are out there.
Video here may be good to share with them. But can’t emphasize enough that I talked to my parents repeatedly about this and he still fell for it, so you’ve got to keep on them about it and/or limit their exposure (like no account sitting there with a lot of money in it).
Man that sucks. It doesn’t sound like there was much more you could have done. I’m going to forward your story to the elders in my life just to serve as another layer of warning and reinforce what they should already know.
In addition to the financial damage, there must be a tremendous amount of guilt and shame after having fallen for one of these scams. I can’t even imagine how I would feel after losing significant funds that my family was counting on. I don’t even want to think about it.
Have you seen The Beekeeper? It’s a silly but pretty satisfying Jason Statham revenge thriller currently on Amazon I think. The whole setup is that a nice older lady who’s friends with Statham’s character gets scammed out of all her money. She commits suicide from the shame and guilt and Statham springs into action and kicks ass for the remainder of the film.
So these scams are so ubiquitous it works as the whole premise for a movie like this. Everybody’s heard of this happening to other people.
Since the government response to these scams seems to be so inadequate, it makes me wonder if there are non-profits that provide either scam-prevention training for seniors (maybe they do presentations in care facilities and 55+ communities) or provide assistance/resources/coordination after it happens.
Yeah I’m pretty worried. My father’s typical response would be extreme anger at the person doing the wrong thing, and he doesn’t seem very upset at all, let alone angry. I’m debating calling my aunt/his sister, to ask her to check in on him - but I don’t know if he’s going to want anyone to know about this because it’s so embarrassing.
He’s making plans for setting up the new account with all his auto pays and direct deposits, so that makes me a little less concerned… but I also don’t think he’s totally digested it.
Haven’t seen or heard of that movie, but I’m angry enough that if I had the chance to kill the people who did this to him right now, 100% I would and I’d roll my dice with a jury.
Looks like there are some apps you can get that alert you if your loved one may be about to fall victim to something, and they’re relatively cheap. Wish I knew about that before. Although we probably would have put it on my mother’s phone and my father would have said he didn’t need it.
The government response is so pathetic, this is for sure $3-5 billion a year being sucked out of the economy. Given how this country works, someone needs to remind the long term care companies that it’s really THEIR money being vacuumed up before they can sink their teeth into it. Then they’d lobby to change some laws and it would happen.
Doing more research, apparently some of the chains that have crypto ATMs train their cashiers to be on the lookout for elderly people depositing large sums of money to stop them from being scammed. So, it makes sense that they sent them to a smoke shop. Why don’t people in a place like that care? Well, the fees are about 20% so the people who own the ATM or allow it to be in their store are getting a nice cut of the scam.
Oh boy this goes way deeper over multiple days.
I echo the responses so far – that absolutely sucks. I can only imagine what you are going though. I’d be absolutely gutted if that happened to somebody in my life. But it sounds like you did what you could, so try not to feel guilty about it!
In my minimally-informed opinion, I’d say it’s unlikely your dad will see any of his money again as a result of any investigation into his specific case. The only chance is probably (again, imo) from a larger investigation that results in one of the big scammer groups getting busted.
With that in mind, I would make sure that whatever evidence is available is in the hands of one or more law enforcement agencies, in particular somebody at the federal level. Things like the phone number(s) they used (which should be connectable to somebody), the QR code that facilitated the Bitcoin transaction (that must have gone to some URL at a domain that was registered to somebody), etc.
Unfortunately, I think it’s likely only the feds would have enough know-how and the power to follow those threads where they lead, and $30k is likely not enough to have them go after your dad’s case specifically. But maybe if there is a larger effort that nabs someone down the road, and your dad’s case could be linked to them, they could recover some money for him? (Sweet Summer Child mode…)
A couple other random thoughts:
Maybe AARP has resources on next steps for people in this situation? As well as “prevention” resources (both for you and for the rest of us on the forum who now have this on our list to talk to our parents about).
Maybe the state AG where he lives could help? At a minimum they might know which law enforcement agency would be most likely to be helpful.
Finally, it’s crazy that this kind of thing is so commonplace that it’s the setup for a movie like The Beekeeper. You might not want to watch it right away due to triggers – on the other hand you might enjoy the payback – but it’s remarkable how many aspects of your dad’s story are right in line with how the scam unfolds in the movie.
Anyway, best of luck! If there’s a silver lining, it’s that many of us here will be checking in with our people, and maybe we can keep them from getting scammed.
Thanks for sharing, that is such a terrible thing to happen. Like others said, not much you could have done. I was just on the phone with my mom who’s 73 and still working and seemingly in good mental shape. Your story reminds me to check on her more often and look for warning signs of mental decline.
F. My dad got scammed out of like $300 on a false service scam. I can’t imagine $30k.
That is just effing brutal.
Shoot the scammers in the face. Burn down the smoke shop. Sorry I only have sympathy and level 0 strategies.
In other news, we’re about to get a cool little mini-moon for a week
Haven’t read replies yet.
So it’s not over yet, they got way more info out of him than he initially told me, I’m probably going to have to fly across the country to try to save the rest of their money from being stolen next week, IF he’ll even let me. It appears my parents had a little more money than I thought, but the rest is very much still at risk and the police who came out (if it was a real cop, at this point I am only like 85% confident) did jack shit to help him or prevent any further fraud/theft.
Thanks, I can’t even describe how I feel. Gutted for him and my mom, gutted for us (I already expected them to outlive their money and for us to take them in, this just speeds that up and I already stress frequently over whether we’ll be able to afford that when the time comes), murderously angry at the people who did this to him, shocked he fell for it, angry at him for falling for this despite repeated warnings even though I know I shouldn’t be angry, angry at him for being dismissive of my past attempts to help him manage his finances and secure his accounts and disrespectful towards me in multiple ways about it.
There’s so many levels to it.
Yeah I agree with this 100% and with everything else you said. If it makes sense, my initial “hey any chance of getting it back?” post was like inner denial over what I knew, and on the off chance someone here with crypto knowledge knew of a step we should take, it was worth a shot.
AARP and State AG are good ones I hadn’t thought of that can probably help/point me in the right direction.
Thanks. Yeah, I mean, in a matter of 3-4 months my Dad went from yeah he forgets some stuff but it’s normal misplaced keys stuff → wow we really need to offer him more help with stuff he couldn’t navigate an airport, we’ll be more careful —> one week later this.
I need to not think of this because those motherfuckers made around $6K off this, and I may be right down the street from them in a day or two.
So the scammers know where my father’s 401k is, know the account number, have a copy of the form to request a distribution, likely know the name of the person who needs to sign it, know exactly how much is in there, and have a copy of my father’s license.
We are no longer able to log into that account, which means they likely got his info and logged in and changed the password, which means they likely changed the mailing address for the check. I cannot get these people on the phone until Monday morning.
Is there a play here other than calling the 401k company first thing Monday? Already have him freezing his credit and setting up fraud alerts. It seems relatively easy now for them to get the full amount sent to whatever address they want and then use a fake ID using the picture he sent to take the check and open a new account and deposit it and then send it to a bitcoin wallet.
All that said, this would give them a tremendous amount of exposure, and we’d have an actual chance to get them caught.
In other news, I am … insert strange emotion here… to report that the bank does not let you make three separate $10K withdrawals without warning you that you’re being scammed. At the second branch the manager of the branch warned him, handed him a sheet of paper that described the scam, right down to the exact thing they told him to tell the teller to explain the withdrawals which was spot on word for word.
He insisted anyway, and the bank made him sign a form releasing them of any responsibility for any scam that was taking place, and he did it and then went back on his phone and yelled at them and argued with them because he suspected, but they convinced him the bank manager was in on it and got him to send them all the money in a bitcoin atm anyway.
Jesus Christ I want to kill these pieces of shit.
You can’t reset, even with control of the email it’s attached to?
edit: you might also try fucking the login enough times to get the account locked, if that’s something their website does automatically
No, I can get a forgot username e-mail sent but not a forgot password e-mail.
Yeah I was hoping to be able to do that, but after like 10 attempts in < 2 minutes I figured it probably wasn’t a feature they have.
So apparently he also installed the app for remote control/viewing/listening on his phone too, so they had access to his phone. And he scanned some mail that got forwarded to him when we moved and sent it to me, so they have some of my valuable personal info too. Shouldn’t be any short-term risks for me, but more shit to sort out.
Flying out there to try to clear this up. He’s also very concerned about buying a new laptop. About halfway through this process he took a hammer and smashed his to bits - does it get any more Boomer than that?
Edit: Also shoutout to the dipshit cop from “cyber crimes” who didn’t even check for remote access apps on his phone. I did more legwork from 3,000 miles away than this “expert” in the cyber crimes unit.
For the tech experts, what’s the likelihood I’m safe to access my parents WiFi with my devices when I arrive? I’m like 95% sure the network wouldn’t be compromised but I want to be 100%. My father gave them remote access control to his laptop, PC, and phone through an app called AnyDesk. Presumably they could have gone in and opened up some ports in the network or something to give themselves access to intercept packets right?
Current plan is to call the ISP before connecting, probably do a full reset of the network.
Could they get any malware somehow downloaded into hardware like a router/modem? Cable box? Anything else that might be a network device? I assume this is impossible, but it’s been about 10-12 years since I would consider myself highly knowledgeable so just making sure.