Preventing access to social media

[spottygymbag]

Elderly DM in law has become the victim of an ongoing cyber love scam. Over 18 months she has lost significant amounts of her and DF in law’s money.
She was showing cognitive impairment a year ago and the GP has recently issued a letter we have taken to the bank to stop her access. Further testing and medical management is now in process.

The issue we have now is how to deal with the social media and messaging side. The scammers are incessant, pressuring and threatening her to the point she called emergency services earlier this week. Part of her impairment is that she cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality so no amount of education or reasoning helps, believe me we have tried! The scammers also transfer her from one platform to another and she will blindly follow their instructions to create new accounts and she is now starting to fall for other scams on top of the ongoing original one.

So from a place of absolute desperation, any ideas on how we can deal with this messaging and contact side of things? Also to note that in the past when we have limited access to messaging and social media on the phone and laptop she has disappeared to the local library to email the scammer that way.

If you changed her phone number, and then changed all her passwords (so phone based reset wouldn't work), would they have any way of still contacting her?
I know that's rather radical, but I guess you could keep the old phone (with old number) so that you could pass on genuine messages and calls.
Would possibly only work for a bit as the scam messages are obviously filling an "attention"/ loneliness hole for her which is a much harder issue long term.

Yes, we’ve tried this approach too. She had a new phone number and we changed the passwords to her existing social media. She had written down one of the email addresses used to contact her so she then set up new accounts and provided the link/new user name to them again. Honestly we are at our wits end and at the point of either locking her phone and internet down completely or giving her a dumb phone. Which works until she goes to the local library…
And yes you’re right, it’s meeting some kind of need. She did have quite a full life until all of this kicked off though- very socially active, kids and grandkids with pretty frequent visits both ways amongst all of them, physically in quite good shape.
its hard to know at this point how much is the declining cognition, and how much is her, and to what extent do we try and protect her before we are overstepping.

I would activate power of attorney and move the majority of her money to a different account only transferring pocket money by direct debit to an account she can access, so for example with my mum she had £50 a week for bits but if that small account exceeded £1k we swiped some back.
Online banking on our phones and Ring doorbells to monitor.
New phone number might deter any existing scammers.
Horrible being her gatekeeper but better than her continuing to lose money at the unsustainable rate she was.

If she's just doing it at the library and isn't able to send anyone any money is that able to do much damage? If you could limit her social media at home by putting parental controls on her devices then her trips to the library would be the worst that could happen right? She can't sit there all day? Or does she?

Ask the library to put her on an under 16 restriction on the pc ?
they might be able to do this on her library card but worth asking first if they can do it as part of safeguarding

contact your council MASH team or equivalent as this woman has suffered financial abuse from people online and you’re trying to prevent this from happening in her local library

also as an aside is the gp has given letter for cognitive decline, get onto council tax for SMI reduction and they’ll send a firm out. Get go to enter date on this form of their diagnosis

that way in-laws should get 25% discount on council tax

This first definitely and hen focus on her getting a social life. She sounds prerry active so there must be something she would be interested in

Am I right in thinking that she no longer has access to money to send to the scammers? That that side of things is now under control, but it's the on-going pressure from the scammers that's the problem?

We have been trying to manage it by giving her small amounts but she will lie about spending it, save it, take to a shop to purchase an Apple gift card and send it to the scammers by email, telegram, Snapchat, messenger… whichever one is currently on the go. It’s like playing whack a mole. This is why we are trying to limit the social media/internet.
Further complicating things is DF in-law’s refusal to believe she actually is cognitively impaired despite having blunt conversations with the GP. He is holding onto hope that her next round of testing will show an improvement. This means he is struggling to not give her access to accounts pushed (so far so good but she can be quite forceful and he is not used to standing up to her in this way).
Additional help for them will come as we make our way further into the system and the GP has been good about signposting all of this. This will still come down to DFIL admitting to help is required and then actually accepting it.

She doesn’t need to be there long- pops in and sets up a new Gmail account, emails them, replies are very quick. Then she’s off to a shop to get another Apple gift card and then back to the library to send the picture/information to them.

I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this, the fact there are so many awful people out there is horrifying really.

Would Age UK possibly have any support available?

Yes, currently has no access except what DFIL gives her for coffees, lunches etc. but the pressure is immense for her and she has begun applying for additional credit cards (that they cannot afford). And the more pressure they put on her, the more pressure she puts on DFIL.

How terrifying. Can I just say you’re doing an amazing job, from someone who’s Dad was involved with scammers for ten years or more.

Id be inclined to move to the dumb phone now. Presumably she would protest?

Is there any organisation representing credit card companies that could advise on flagging her somehow so that the new card applications get declined?

Can you get the police involved. Might she listen to a police officer?

Can she articulate what she thinks is happening? Is she thinking that the scammers are in desperate poverty or hoping for love?

Libraries can stop access to computers for some people.

maybe try talking to them?

sorry it sounds like a horrendous situation

DFIL has texted DH and said they will both move to dumb phones. Fingers crossed this actually happens. In the meantime DH has worked some IT wizardry and we have blocked a whole lot of the social media and messaging apps on her phone.
I have contacted the main credit reporting facilities and started the process for a credit freeze so it will decrease the chances of her getting any other lines of credit.
I think we have been struggling to push through on some things because we keep wanting her to “come to her senses”, and we’ve been trying not to overstep. But we’re coming round to the idea that this is the new reality and her senses aren’t really there to come back to!

The police have been informed but she nods and says the right thing then carries on.

She believes she is in love, that they are engaged, and that she will travel to be with him (we removed her passport when this came to light).

I have contacted the library, explained the situation, provided a photo of her and the GP letter and asked them to call DFIL if they happen to see her.

How is the scammer still able to operate from the same email address? Have the police or action fraud not been notified? Can you not report them to Gmail and have the account shut down?

Thanks all for responding. It’s such a bizarre situation, it’s been good just to be able to post and hear that we’re trying the right things.
I’ve been through dementia support with my grandmother but that was well before smartphones and scamming to the extent it is now days!
worst we had with her was the wandering and excessive amounts of soft toys!

This isn’t directly to help the scammer situation, and I see she’s moved to a dumb phone now. But I think an AI app might help her to direct her ‘conversation’ elsewhere; it might help plug the gap of ‘someone’ to chat to?

There are many emails, and profiles. We report them, they get shutdown and they start a new one very quickly. We have even reported it to the local authorities in their country. We have just found another two PayPal acccounts, and two more Gmail accounts. It’s SO frustrating.

If they have shut down their email address and you have changed your MIL's contact details, how are they making contact with one another? You said before that when you changed everything your MIL had kept one of their email addresses.

I used to think I was a civilised person but scammers and fraudsters bring out the homicidal maniac in me. I hope the dumb phone move is a success.

It’s very hard to imagine an obsession this intense going away easily, and also sad to think that when it does, it will be because your DMIL’s cognitive decline has got worse.

Could they get a kitten??