DM is in late 80’s and lives alone (but close by) in sheltered accommodation.
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia last year ( sort of by accident … but that’s another story!) but she is normally very ‘with it’ and together. Her memory is actually better than mine! We were beginning to think that the diagnosis was a mistake … until yesterday when she acted completely out of character.
Yesterday she was a victim of a £14k fraud / burglary carried out by two individuals pretending to be from her bank: one on the phone and one who turned up at her door. They worked together to rob my mother under the guise of transferring her account to a new branch that they claimed ‘would opening nearby next month’.
In total they took £14k from her current account, £250 of cash she had in the house, and her iPad complete with her card reader and her banking pin 😩
If I’m being fair, the stars were probably more than averagely aligned for the fraudsters… Mum hates having to go by bus to her most local bank branch since they closed several months ago and so her interest in having a new local bank was piqued from the get go. Also she had recently been chatting with a neighbour about a mobile branch of Barclays that had been around locally and so when the fraudsters suggested coming round to ‘help her’. She didn’t think it too odd.
I am stunned however that she didn’t suspect anything was up until the fraud was well and truly underway - she watches all those daytime tv programmes with Gloria Hunniford about scams and we always tell her not to give out her banking details to anyone even if talking to the actual bank but yesterday she just stunned us. For one she gave out her card number on the phone including pin, secondly when asked about recent transactions on her card she just handed over her stash of cash for the thief to count as she’d got it out of the wall the day before and thirdly she let the guy walk off with her iPad under the guise of checking something in his van! It’s pretty shocking tbh. Shamefully I was so annoyed with her when she told me and I had to try very hard to keep calm and not get mad at her .. with hindsight they worked hard to confuse her with a intense two pronged attack and I feel terrible for her now… I was just so shocked that a normally sensible person would do all those things! I’m grateful of course that she was not harmed in any way and shaken about how things could have gone another way so maybe it was good she complied?
Thankfully the bank will make good the money taken and her contents insurance should cover the iPad and cash and it looks like the police have found footage of the thieve on cctv. We disabled the iPad as soon as we knew it was gone. Going forward I really need to set some parameters in place so this can’t happen again and she agrees this is for the best. I already have power of attorney but need to put this into practice with the bank. I have suggested to her, and she agrees, that I do all her Internet banking from now on and she will not be privy to the log on information or hold the reader. Instead of her having her debit card we are going to transfer a set amount a month onto a pre paid card and I will get out small amounts of cash for her when she needs it ( she pays her cleaner by cash and likes to use cash when out and about). Does this seem reasonable? I don’t want to clip her wings too much as she is still very independent and enjoys eating out, buying clothes and knick knacks etc but I feel she does need protecting from herself and others.