How to Protect Your Elderly Parents from Scammers

This article comes from our recent experience with an elderly family member. He is a man who listens to no one. At this time, he manages every part of his life including what he spends on junk mail. For years he has thrown money into buying gifts from Publishers Clearing house, always convinced he will win in the coming month. We have not been able to talk him out of this practice. At least Publisher's Clearing House is legal. The new nightmare began in December. The experience turned December into a nightmare for all of us. Perhaps our experience will help you to better protect your elderly family members.

What kind of scams? There are email scams by the thousands, telephone scams, and mail scams as well. The Jamaica schemes actually send bogus checks. The person is instructed to send back money to cover taxes and fees. The check later bounces to the account. The person loses the money he sent for fees and taxes. If he spends that money or writes checks against that money, he will be responsible for paying the bank back. The amounts promised are from $3000 to 3 million dollars. The checks are very real looking. Modern graphics and printers are a boon to thieves these days.

It should be stressed that these guys are pros who are smooth and convincing. They call them up posing as official lotto agents, government federal agents, and undercover police. They build a friendship with the victim, then enter into the intimidation including threats of death, rape, and death to their families. Our family member received 50 phone calls within a two week period. These professional scammers are now even seducing younger people as well. As jobs are lost and people become desperate, the scammers become more successful.

How Thousands Can Be Lost In Just Weeks:

He began getting calls and mail from Jamaica, the UK, and Africa. We are still not sure how they got his name and phone. We did not learn about it until he had sent $3500 to these scammers in two different scams. One was a UK Lotto and the other a 'you won 3 million dollars' scam. In both of them he had to send money for taxes etc on the money he would receive. He had to send them cash to receive his loot.

We did not learn about it until one day when he informed us he was going to be rich and help the family. He showed us the letter when we met him for dinner one night. We immediately told him it was a scam and to throw all of it away. He got angry and said we were crazy. He knew that it was real. He would not listen to reason. We then had his grandson call him. He didn't believe him either. We were not sure what to do next. We told him to consult with his banker. When his bank confirmed it was a fraud, he walked out on them too. We were at wits end on what to do next.

The next day he called us stating he was on the way to the post office to mail off $2000 dollars in cash or he would lose the 3 million. We pleaded with him to wait but he said he was going there now. We drove into town with little time to stop him. On the way we called the police and asked them to intercept him at the post office. We arrived nearly at the same time as the police. To our advantage there were long Christmas lines and he was still waiting in line at the post office. The police spent an hour with him explaining how they knew it was a scam. They followed him back to his apt and asked to see the paperwork from these men. We then found out that he had already lost $3000 in one scam and $500 in another in the first week of December. The police again told him how it was a scam and not to answer their calls or mail. He agreed to their advice. We called Cox and Verizon to get his phone numbers changed. His new home phone number could not be activated until the next morning.

Right after the police left, the bad guys called again. He had promised the officers he would not take their calls, but he answered the phone before we could stop him. He agreed to meet them at 4PM with the $2000 cash. They were supposed to give him $10,000 in exchange for $2000 to cover taxes. He had already given them his home address in previous calls. We called he police back and they said they would come back at 4 PM. Four police cars showed up at 4 PM for a half hour. There was no sign of the bad guys. They again talked to him in depth about his dangerous behavior. He seemed to come back to his senses but I felt he would open the door if they came back that night. Since he had two thousand in cash on his person, I decided to stay the night to make sure the money went back into the bank the next day. it was a long night. They never called back that night. His new unlisted phone number was activated the next morning.

It was only been a couple of weeks and now he is receiving mail from the same scammers complete with a bogus $3 million dollar check. He took it to the bank which confirmed it was a fraud and is taking it to the police officers tomorrow who talked to him two weeks ago. He still believes deep down that perhaps somehow it could be a real deal. This will continue to be a problem with him it seems. We have a new strategy in place and here are some of the actions we have taken.

Here are some of the actions we are taking to try and protect him.

Call Adult Protective Services To Talk To Them: In our case, Adult Protective Services were called in by the police because he had lost $3500 already. The APS case worker came and interviewed him. He was given all the mental tests. He passed then with no problem. He was advised by the APS worker to have either a family member or paid accountant monitor his bank account. He denied he needed help. He would not hear of it. Since he passed the tests, there was nothing else the man could do but file a report.

If he had failed the tests, it would have given us more evidence in the future to go to court to prove him incompetent to manage his finances. Right now, the court would only deny our request. He is not yet considered incompetent enough for the court to take away his ability to monitor his own accounts. This is true despite the fact he never balances his check book nor keeps track of money spent properly. He is free at this point to lose what little money he has left.

Mail Review Actions: If they will allow it, review their mail with them to see what kind of scam mail they are receiving including mail from charities that are not valid. Even if they are valid, they may be giving excessive amounts of money to these groups when they can't afford it.

Review the mail for overdue notices or shut off notices on house bills such as electric and water.

If your parents are failing mentally, try to intercept their mail first, taking out all the requests for money valid or not. Give them the mail that is important only.

If they are in the later stages, only give them the fun junk mail such as church newsletters or community news.

Bank Account Actions

If you can persuade them, have them appoint someone as power of attorney over their bank accounts and assets. If they will not agree to that then get the bank manager, minister of their church, or a trusted friend to talk to them. If that all fails then go to the next steps:

Offer to help them with their checkbook to make sure it is balanced and accurate. If they will not accept your help, see if there is another family member or trusted friend they would allow to help them. Who ever it is that is appointed, it is wise to keep check on their honesty. Many family members and accountants have been found to get greedy when money is involved especially if the individual is failing mentally. There should always be some checks in place to make sure no one takes advantage of their weakness or excessive generosity. That is why care givers are not allowed to accept gifts from the patients they take care of.

Try to find out if they are paying their house bills on time. If not, try to get them to agree to have them deducted automatically by the bank. This way the bills won't be paid late or get ignored in the pile of papers on their desk.

If they have sent the spammers a check, you need to change the bank account number immediately. These scam artists can use the information printed on that check to do all sorts of financial damage.

Telephone Actions:

Request their phone numbers be entered as unpublished. Put their number on the National Do Not Call list listed at the bottom of this article.

If your parents have given scam artists their phone number, you need to take immediate actions. It is important to change their phone numbers, make those numbers unpublished, with no forwarding given. If it's a cell phone, go in and delete the spammers numbers from the call received, calls missed, and calls dialed out.

Have the phones put into your name or get added to the phone account so you can monitor the calls. If they begin calling foreign countries or unfamiliar numbers, you need to beware. Our family member racked up $161.00 of calls to these scammers in the month of Dec. We are now reviewing the phone records every week.

Our phone carrier, Verizon, will allow you to block phone numbers on your account. We blocked the spammers numbers so he can't call again. We will review the telephone bill weekly to check for trouble. 867 numbers are the main ones used from the Jamaica scammers.

If they have a land line or cell phone in their name, try to sneak a look at the phone bill to see if there are calls listed that are red flags.

The problem with elderly parents when they are failing, is that they may pass the Adult protective Services tests, be competent enough to manage some parts of their life, but be incompetent when it comes to fraud and mail scams. In many cases, your relative will not listen well to anyone. The police did get further with him than we did or the bank manager.

Do not be afraid to ask the police to assist you in talking to your elderly parents. We found out, they will come out and do that especially if the senior has already lost money in a fraud scheme. I was impressed with their efforts to help save our relative from himself. APS did a great job in their interview as well. All efforts showed how a man can be competent enough to drive, take care of his everyday needs, and pay his bills but not have enough sense to turn down a scam even when warned from the police. He would not even listen to the bank manager, who he respects greatly. The APS told us that many of the elderly get obsessed with winning money to the point of it becoming an addiction. They seem to lose all reason connected to these scams. All you can do is to monitor things as closely as possible. When you can, get them to appoint someone to help them with their bank account before it is too late.

To report mail fraud call 1-877-876-2455 or visit https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

Telemarketing fraud, including fraud originating from Jamaica, should be reported to the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or by visiting http://www.ftc.gov, just click on "Consumer Complain?"

National Do Not Call Registry: You can register online at WWW.DONOTCALL.GOV or call toll-free, 1-888-382-1222 (TTY 1-866-290-4236), from the number you wish to register. Registration is free.

References:

www.stop-scammers.com/reporting_resources.asp

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=117099&catid=188

www.jamaicasmostwanted.com/2009/06/11/jamaica-lottery-scams-parts-1-and-2/

www.ftc.gov/donotcall