Parent scammed out of £250,000

[scamchild]

Posting here for traffic but I guess it is aibu in some sense as I have no idea what to do.

This is the 4th time my parent has been scammed out of a large sum of money. This time an inheritance lump sum.

She's a Covid denier. She thinks banks can't be trusted and will collapse and a complete conspiracy theory freak. I'm wondering if she is mentally unwell given she's done this 4 times.

She's given £250k to "coinbase" and "gold" only it's a "gmail" account. And written in bad English. And various other things. I can't get an answer out of her. How much? When? Why? How? She's confused and seems to think she's only lost a small amount but also says she has nothing left. So £250k is gone. She communicates to scammers on "telegram"

Help me!!!! I literally dont know what to do.

Called bank and they are useless. They will only deal with her. The password she gave me for bank doesn't work! I've called action fraud but have limited info.
She lives a flight away so I can't meet her easily.

The power of attorney is applied for by the "donor", ie the person who is giving another person permission to make decisions about their affairs, be they financial or medical.

Another person can of course assist the donor with correct completion of the forms (many people get a solicitor to help them, although that of course comes at a cost) but it is the donor who is making the application, not the attorney.

@scamchild I think your idea about showing your mum pictures of the scam-factories is a good one. Also links to articles, but it would need to be a news source she trusts. And she would need significant emotional support to deal with the fallout if she does eventually believe it. She will feel grief, profound embarrassed, betrayal, and will lose trust in a lot of other things.

These places are often populated by women and children, often in modern-slavery conditions and under fear for their lives. Not quite the charismatic middle aged entrepreneur that they are coached to portray themselves as.

I'm afraid I don't have any words of wisdom but I understand your anger and frustration! I'd be fuming, especially as she's seeming as if she isn't bothered!

It's bizarre. Almost like she wants to be scammed.

I'm a bit obsessed with catfish scams and watch a lot of youtube stuff and it does strike me how significantly they differ from bank fraud/phishing scams in that sense. They're almost more like a gambling addiction.

It's worth seeing if you can get her assessed for dementia, it might not be, but imo there's signs it could be. I also would definitely see if you can persuade her to allow you to register a Power Of Attorney. My father was absolutely obsessed with money, but most certainly was not keen on allowing us to help him manage his accounts. We persuaded him that it was in his best interests to let us register a PoA, as he had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and if a doctor deemed him incapable of making decisions, his accounts would be frozen and he wouldn't have any access to his money at all. If we had PoA, he'd have access via us, which he was happier with. That was a godsend as a few years later when he started withdrawing thousands of pounds a week in cash for no apparent reason (we never did find out where the money went), we could spot it and alert the bank, who stopped it. We didn't need anything to prove he no longer had mental capacity (although he quite clearly did not), just with the PoA we were able to stop him withdrawing money. I'm sorry you're dealing with this, it's a very tricky thing to navigate. Can you travel up to stay with/near her for a while to see if you can get the logistics sorted?

It's time to get a flight and visit.

Could you do PoA online? It's long-winded but you can do it yourselves (if she'll agree)

Has she bi-polar, start of dementia, poor self esteem?

What about POA

Friend of mine gave 5k to scammers - a ‘romantic scam’. The bank actually repaid her the money. I was very surprised. So make sure you get into the banks fraud team

Called bank and they are useless. They will only deal with her.

The bank is quite right about only dealing with the customer and not some random person who phones them up claiming a relationship. I hope you can get something sorted out for her but they are really not to blame.

@TheCompactPussycat it was a comment in reference to dm going into a branch today. Phone lines may well be open but it sounds like she was just trying to fob op off by saying that.

@TheCompactPussycat

I am genuine

What is all this trying to catch me out shit?
Why would I make this up?

I'm gutted. She's chosen to give a shed loads of money to some African scammer whilst watching me and other family members struggle. I'm incredibly hurt. She's incredibly tight with us. Giving small gifts to grandchildren and not putting her hand in pocket when eating out etc. it all makes sense now.

We called the fraud line as soon as we found out. They are 24hours. But a more detailed conversation needs to take place. We will need to do that when the banks reopen.

Action fraud is not for Scotland which is where she is. We followed guidance online and went directly to the police in that case.

She's likely still in contact with the scammers is my bet.

she was saying "if I give them £3k they will get my money back. They have recovered it so I just need to pay" they will not stop! Of course we told her, that is a known scam too!

I need to visit her, I know but I'm so angry and i have my own stuff going on with healthy and work and kids. Not to mention I can't afford to just fly up there. I'm self employed and have work lined up for next two weeks.

Google the contingent reimbursement model and the banking protocol (did she visit the branch?) Either may apply here. The money won't be recoverable as it's gone to crypto but the bank may refund some or all on an investigation. You will need your mother's authority to ask them to investigate it.

@scamchild I think you really have to bite the bullet and take a few days up with her to get this sorted out/ What country are you in OP? the banks all over UK are closed today, not just in england. if you are in UK would she allow you to take over all her online banking and her bank card, changing all her passwords for paypal and other payment schemes? you can then order her food delivery and pay via her account. she sounds like her own worst enemy and no amount of talking to her will get her away from this mindset she has. set up direct debits for her other bills like council tax and electricity etc. sadly, some people will do anything for "love"!!

My elderly DM got scammed out of nearly £15k by some Nigerian students. Fortunately they were based in this country and stupidly didn't move the money overseas. The police got involved, they went to prison and mum got her money back. She was lucky.

It was a similar scam, they pretended to be a rich American working for the UN, who promised to marry her if she kept sending money for flights etc.

It's so hard to get someone who is so deeply involved with the scammers to see they are being scammed. When we initially approached the police they also said there wasn't much they could do as it's not illegal to spend your money how you want. My brother got Action Fraud involved and managed to get all the comms from her computer which were eventually used as evidence in court. Because they were UK based, they had broken the law so the police could act.

If the money had gone overseas I don't think it would have been recovered. Certainly the bank weren't willing to help. This was about 6 or so years ago. I hope you manage to get your parent to see sense OP.

If your mum is employed could you call up her employer and advise them of what's been happening? Maybe they can help.

I'm so sorry OP, this must be incredibly frustrating and worrying 😟 it sounds like your relative is stubborn and doesn't want to admit she's been very foolish. I'm not sure what you can do to stop her if she's deemed as having capacity. I would start by asking Social Services for a unified assessment - this will be health and social care assessing your relatives needs. Hope you start to get through to her about how serious this is. Take care of yourself 💐

Similar is happening with a friend and her father. He keeps getting phone calls getting him to sign up to random shit he doesn’t need. She can’t stop him but he won’t stop doing it.

You can get a filter on phones so only trusted numbers can ring through.

Urgh every time we look at her statements it gets worse.

33k in one month of outgoings. I've clicked on the analytics button to see breakdown of monthly spending. £16k the next month. The last one was April 26 as far as I can see.

The "councilll tax" one is so much and seemed to have money going on and out but overall about £9k gone to that. Weirdly this is by "debit card". Why would money go in and then out. There are 6 x in/out payments in one day.

I think she's been giving out her card info... not just doing online transfers and the cash for phones thing.

What a nightmare for you.

I don’t know what the law is where she lives, but in the U.K., if a person is deemed to have capacity, the law takes the view that they are free to throw their money away however they wish to. The police will not intervene unless the person themselves complains.
Unfortunately we found this out the hard way after a neighbour was scammed out of over £100k - payments for ‘tax’ on a ‘lottery win’ of £1m - a lottery she hadn’t even entered. She had no dementia, was just incredibly naive and trusting.
Nothing we said could convince her - the people were ‘so nice!’ over the phone - it was all done via the phone, she had no internet.
Eventually, blocking non-trusted calls was the only way.

Has her bank warned your DM that she’s almost certainly being scammed? Although I know people are often so far sucked in that they just won’t believe it.

If you can get her officially deemed to lack capacity, that would be great, but I can’t think it’s ever easy unless the person is showing a lot of other signs, apart from being a sucker for scammers.

I'm really sorry to read this @scamchild, especially since she's been so utterly selfish wasting money that could have been used to give people who love her a much better quality of living in the col climate.

My mum is extremely poor, state pension and nothing else these days despite working from 18 to 70 with no breaks. She made no plans for her future in that time.
And yet, despite being relatively poor, she repeatedly gets fucking scammed. Not love scams and due to her lack of disposable income not huge amounts but enough where I have to help her with her basics if she's believing some fucker is going to send her a new smeg fridge and Henry hoover for her last £30.

She'll pay things phone scammers tell her she owes, she's sound of mind, just very gullible and refuses to learn from her mistakes. It's like by accepting its a new scam, the previous ones were also and that means she is, shock horror, wrong.

It's truly ironic someone with such poor money skills is the absolute doppelganger of none other than Deborah meaden. Sometimes I watch dragons den and I'm low key furious at my mam. (Also a difficult* person, like OPs mum, not the lovely deborah)

*stubborn know it all.