Foreign romance and money

[DaemonMoon]

I've been reading about foreign romance scammers targeting older people and it seems a lot of the time they never meet.

Would you be suspious if your parent had a long term 'friendship' lasting over a decade with someone from another country? They visited each other etc. 20ish year age gap. And said parent, who still works with no mortgage, had to postpone things to pay for repairs etc? I can't fathom why they don't have the money.

Of course it suspicious if they don’t have the money yet should have it under normal circumstances. I know of two older people this has happened to.. I believe you can request the police to come out and talk to the person about the risks of such relationships. Might help.. the issue really is whether the person has capacity or not. And whether they choose to listen!

The person has capacity. Intelligent. Would destroy our relationship I believe. We've met the friend, spent time with them. Only recently has my parent started saying can't do / afford because needs to save.

I think a bit of straight talking is needed with your parent, if you think there’s something amiss going on.

I've been thinking about this more. They did something odd in August that had me watching their behaviour for signs of dementia. Nothing else.

I've been encouraging them to seek help for another health issue, which also means paying for something. Been direct 'take it from savings,' but I wonder whether it could also be related to that. They refuse to do anything for this, so raising dementia with them, which is only a new concern, would be met with the same resistance.

Could have an “innocent” explanation, repair costs have soared, they don’t want to dip into savings, hence the need to save up for repairs. But could also be romance scam - 20 years is a long time, but if it’s been profitable, why stop? Bit strange that you’ve met him, I’d have thought he’d want to keep himself in the background.

You can’t get access to her bank accounts, so you’ll need to take things gently. Start by encouraging her to talk about the guy. Look out for her calling him more than just a friend. I would spend some time getting as much information as you can before going in with “hard talking” or a police visit. She’ll clam up completely after that.

note pronoun use is entirely arbitrary, her for parent, him for friend