mother is in romance scam. advice needed

[hamburgerhelpful]

My mother is involved in an ongoing phone scam which seems to be a romance scam. I just wanted to get any advice about things I haven't thought of doing yet, and also just to share/vent.

In December 2021 my brother and I discovered our mother, a senior, was being scammed. My brother saw some photo of a blank check in her phone's photo library, and also she called him one day asking him to borrow $1000, so this raised the red flag for us.While visiting her, she told me that she was talking to a man over the phone who was romantically interested in her, yet she couldn't tell me even where this man lived. I asked her if she'd given him any money and she said no.

I then accessed her bank account via the bank's website (we knew her username because we'd helped her set it up), and this is when I discovered she had a balance of -7000 dollars.

She was very embarrassed/ashamed and reticent to tell us much, but I did 3-way calls with her to her bank and also some fraud hotlines, and through these calls I learned that:

the scammers claimed to be Publisher's Clearing House

she first sent them money through gift cards, I think about $1500

then they sent her a fake check for $7000. she cashed it at her bank and sent them the cash Fedex overnight

I don't know how they managed to transition from this Publisher's Clearing House scam to also a romance scam, but they did it.

No money was recovered and the debt was not forgiven by the bank. The money she gave them in gift cards was money my brother had given her to use to fix the transmission in her car.

With her original bank account hopelessly overdrawn, we had her open a new bank account at a different bank so that she could try to get her social security check direct deposit transferred over, and just generally so she'd have a bank account for financial needs like bills and such.

We got the username and password to her bank and her email, with her consent, so that we could monitor them.

WIth her on the line, I spoke to the national fraud hotline, an AARP fraud counselor, and the state's elder abuse department. I called the police department and had them go to her house and take her report. I looked for counseling resources for her, but with no success. I called the senior center to try to get them to reach out to her and encourage her to go there in order to give her some community and social engagement to make her less vulnerable to such scams, but the senior center does not call people. (I don't live in the same state as my mother by the way, but my brother does).

Also I installed Robokiller on her phone. And she changed her phone number.

The state elder abuse department was the most helpful, sending a caseworker out to speak to my mother and counsel her.

A month later around the end of January, our childhood neighbor contacted me worried because my mother had called him asking for money for an emergency. He was worried that maybe she was being extorted by someone. He also called the police to have them do a wellness check on her.

This was when we knew that she was involved in some scam again.

My brother talked to her, and she claimed to be asking for money to fix her car, which wasn't true as the car is functioning fine.

The next week, a bank manager from her new bank contacted my brother and told him that our mother had been trying to deposit fake checks into her account and had sent one of her own checks, in the amount of $1700 to a halfway house in a nearby city. The manager told us she would continue to monitor her account and do her best to intercept fraudulent activity.



I called the fraud reporting hotline and the state elder abuse hotline to report this new development.

Around this time I also saw in my mother's emails that she had many emails about loans, one from a local loan company, indicating she had probably been trying to take out a loan. I don't know whether or not she was successful. It's hard to imagine, as she has a lot of debt and no collateral, but who knows.

We asked our mother's best friend to call and talk to her. She said that our mother wouldn't tell her anything, and after some time our mother got upset and ended the call.

We learned from our mother's friend that our mother had changed her phone number again. She gave us the new number. This friend also told us that our mother had also called asking her for money recently.

The next day, I called my mother. We made small talk for some time, she seemed normal. I then told her that her bank had contacted us and told us about some fraudulent activity which she was involved in. She told me a little. She said that it was not the same scammers as before. She said that they had promised her 5 million dollars. She said that she had stopped talking to them and changed her number. She said that she had not given them any money.

But then she asked how I knew her new number, and when I told her that I had talked to her friend, she got upset and ended the call. I guess the thought of us all knowing so much about her getting scammed made her really embarrassed/ashamed. Understandable.

My brother informed me later that day that she then called the bank and yelled at this manager who had informed us, and told the manager that the embarrassment made her feel like killing herself.

I realized when trying to call her the next day that she had blocked my phone number. She had also blocked my brother's phone number.

The next week, I saw in my mother's email a receipt from the Verizon store. She had gone to the store in person and purchased two iPhone 13's, making just a downpayment and signing up for phone plans on both. Then she went to the AT&T store and bought one more iPhone 13.

I reported this development to the elder abuse department.

I also called the police department to report this. The police are very rude and curt by the way. They always tell me first to call my mother and have my mother call them. Once I tell them that that's not going to happen, they take my statement and say they will send someone out to get her report. I never get any followup information from them.

The next day, my brother, who is able to see her phone's location, saw that she was at the UPS store. So the next day I called them and explained the situation. They said that they would intercept the shipment and return it to their store. They haven't yet followed up with me on if it was indeed intercepted and returned.

Last week her new bank account was closed by the bank. The manager informed us that it was closed because of continuing attempts to deposit fake checks.

The elder abuse caseworker finally contacted me around that time, the first time since early January, to get me to clarify the details about the phone purchases. She said that she would visit her again today. It seems that she had visited again after I reported the bank manager's communication with us in late January.

The elder abuse caseworker called again when she was at my mother's house to inform me that my mother was not answering her door or her phone, though her car was there. Presumably she was ignoring the caseworker.

We did manage to recover the iphones from the UPS store and we returned them to the stores they came from. My brother and the police went to our mom's house and spoke with her briefly, because he needed her ID for the phone return. She was very reticent to say anything about any of it. But my brother and the police told her as sternly as they could that she was being scammed.

Just yesterday she ordered $1000 of jewelry on Montgomery Ward. I saw the purchase in her email and was able to call MW and have it canceled and have her account closed.

And she left her Elder Abuse caseworker a voicemail telling her to end her services. I'm not sure yet if this means the caseworker has to stop or if she will continue.

I think that's everything. At this point, our mother won't talk to us, and now it seems she won't talk to her elder abuse caseworker either. At this point, she is not sharing her phone location anymore either. We still have access to her email though. Of course, I could email her or call her from someone else's phone number, but I just don't think she would read/listen and it would probably agitate her further and lead to even further estrangement.

Thanks for reading.


My mother didn't have any savings or assets to begin with, so at least it isn't this situation you hear about of someone losing a fortune to a scammer. But the stress and emotional abuse that she must be experiencing is heartbreaking.

If you have any information about resources and strategies which might be new and helpful for me, I'd really appreciate your input.

[FrumpyBB]

Terrible in fact, I don´t know what to say or advise tonight. You have done so much already - and the scam is still so powerful

[hamburgerhelpful]

Terrible in fact, I don´t know what to say or advise tonight. You have done so much already - and the scam is still so powerful

Thank you for your reply. It helps just to be heard.

I'm not sure what will happen. I'm trying hard not to be angry at her, and not to give up on her. But she makes it very challenging.

I hope that once her financial situation gets unsustainable she will be forced to face reality.

[IceFM]

..... the worsed case will be a charge of money laundering if she keeps putting bogus checks on the account. Its quite normal that people don't listen anymore to the Family when it comes to Romancescams or when they think they can become rich very fast. Both can end up in a Desaster. You'vce really done alot .... this we appreciate.
Its like talking to a sick Dog but you must continue to avoid more problems. You MUST have a look to the Bank account.

[hamburgerhelpful]

..... the worsed case will be a charge of money laundering if she keeps putting bogus checks on the account. Its quite normal that people don't listen anymore to the Family when it comes to Romancescams or when they think they can become rich very fast. Both can end up in a Desaster. You'vce really done alot .... this we appreciate.
Its like talking to a sick Dog but you must continue to avoid more problems. You MUST have a look to the Bank account.

Thank you for the advice.

The bank account has been closed, and at this point she has no bank account at all so far as we know.

[hamburgerhelpful]

I'm trying to keep reaching out to my mom, but it's so hard to know what to say. Don't say too much? Don't say too little? Show tough love? Show nothing but kindness?

I drafted this text. Any feedback is appreciated. What am I supposed to say?

----------------------------------------------------

Thinking of you today mom. Love you.

You probably think we’re doing you wrong here. The truth is we don’t know what to do. We just want this to end before it ends bad. You could end up losing your home or going to prison or worse if this keeps going. If I didn’t do everything I could to stop that, I could never live with myself.

As soon as you’re ready to trust your child over a stranger who’s stealing from you, I will be here.

[hamburgerhelpful]

Yesterday she tried to send a package via Fedex to a company in Lauderdale Lakes Florida which ships things to Jamaica. We intercepted the package and had it returned to sender but that won't do anything long term of course.

But anyway, I guess that we can assume that they are in Jamaica.

Not that there's anything we can do with that information.

[hamburgerhelpful]

It looks like we may have been able to successfully divert the package so that it will not be returned to the sender. I sent her an email showing her that the address she had sent it to was a Jamaican shipping company and telling her as clearly as I can that the people she's been talking to are Jamaican scammers.

The elder abuse caseworker spoke to the police and informed us that there is a case and a detective on the case. So that's good to know because before the police had given us the impression that they were not making any record or doing anything about the case.

[hamburgerhelpful]

A text. ("phone" is what is presumably in the package she's trying to send) Just hurts, for my mother to tell me she'll never talk to me again.

[Notfallin4it]

Thanks for sharing OP. I am at a total loss with my mother and I have no idea where to start or what to do. She has lost a lot of money and is about to come into a while lot more and I don't know how to save her from herself. I will Make another post with what little details I have a she won't tell me much other than her and an actor from NCIS are in love Yada Yada . The things you and your brother have done so far are more than I ever thought to do. Thank you for posting Brevard now I know where to start. What about taking her to court and have a judge award you guardianship over her, that's what I've thought about doing with my mom