Major financial mistakes/scams--should adult child take over?

[Anonymous]

My Dad has recently (last few months) charged $60,000 in political contributions to his credit card. It's unclear exactly how much he was intentionally donating and how much was due to "recurring donations"--but basically it's hundreds (possibly thousands) of small donations ranging from $3-100 each. My dad (and mom who has severe dementia) live on the west coast and my brother who lives local to them has been doing most of the work of overseeing them My brother is an authorized user on one of the bank accounts, but my dad has other bank accounts, plus several credit cards so my siblings and I assume there could be other financial disasters we don't yet know about.
In the bank account my brother can see, my dad has written at least $800 in other political donations in the last ew weeks.

When asked about it he gets very angry. He'll admit it was a mistake to donate that much money and that he has tried to stop them from charging the donations and that he has "written them letters" asking them to stop. He has told my brother to "stop being mean to him because he's still learning" or also that he "has learned his lesson." He would definitely resist giving my brother (or any of us siblings) full control/view of all his accounts.


If you had an elderly parent make major financial mistakes/been scammed, did you or your siblings take control of their money? Either full control or even just "oversight" over everything? Did your parent agree to this, or did you have to go to court?

[Anonymous]

See if you can get him to close that bank account and open a new one at the same bank. That should put an end to the recurring charges at least. And you can have the bank put a cap on the amount he can spend without signing something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:See if you can get him to close that bank account and open a new one at the same bank. That should put an end to the recurring charges at least. And you can have the bank put a cap on the amount he can spend without signing something.

OP here
But it was a credit card, and each charge was small-so I'm not sure a cap on a transaction amount would matter? He did put a freeze on that credit card.

[Anonymous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/politics/recurring-donations-seniors.html

OP here
The article above is basically the situation my Dad is in with Act Blue. There is also a Republican counterpart called Win Red.

The article states that one man was able to get back about 10% of what his Dad lost, but even if my dad was to get back money--I'm more worried about what scam he will fall for next. Maybe he's learned his lesson about this specific situation, but there will be plenty of others.

[Anonymous]

Try spinning it as you’re outraged at the campaigns for running a scam on recurring donations - your dad did the right thing, and they are stealing from him.

You’re in an icky period where you would have a hard time getting POA and you could blow up the relationship trying.

If you can sweet talk your way into helping it will be much better. If any of you is a daughter, that could go better (because of misogyny but any port in a storm).

[Anonymous]

My FIL falls for scams and also donation asks. Totally resistant to change.

If you can, get rid of the landline, because his number is probably on every scam list out there. If he won't go to a cell phone, just change his landline number.

Also if possible move him off...AOL if he's still on there. You can set him up with a new email, like gmail, and set some Rules (for the email, not for your dad)

Then your brother can come by periodically and look at his email and block the scam emails.

You can get someone to check in on him--hire someone to "do the bookkeeping" or a little housecleaning but also monitoring all this.

[Anonymous]

Learn the username/passwords for email, bank, credit cards. Download the apps. Sign in as him and monitor what is going on. Run a credit check to see what accounts are out there, close ones, lock his credit. Go through his postal mail as often as possible, try to get his name of mailing lists. Block & unsubscribe on his email.

Make sure he knows the basic scams. Any request for payments be made in gift cards, requests to allow login in to his computer/tablet because of viruses detected, frantic phone calls from relatives asking for emergency funds. . . So many.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try spinning it as you’re outraged at the campaigns for running a scam on recurring donations - your dad did the right thing, and they are stealing from him.

You’re in an icky period where you would have a hard time getting POA and you could blow up the relationship trying.

If you can sweet talk your way into helping it will be much better. If any of you is a daughter, that could go better (because of misogyny but any port in a storm).

Not necessarily. My Japanese Grandfather listened to his son, my father, and completely ignored his daughters. My father was his parents' golden child, even though his sisters did the grunt work. It was pretty stunning to see the contrast.

[Anonymous]

I would suggest that he limit his credit cards to only one and not use it for donations. He can have one bank account just for donations and put $1000 in it for the year. When that $1000 is gone, he cannot donate anymore.

[Anonymous]

Omg this happened to my dad! I knew he liked the politician but luckily it caught it since I see his monthly statements and I called people I know who worked for the politician and cut it off. The weird part was I was pretty sure it was over the allowed donation limit, or about to be. It was five hundred a month to a congressman. What’s the maximum?

Anyway I think it is very easy for this to happen. Honestly you could try contacting act blue and the individual candidates and asking for the money back. They might do it. Insisting on keeping it looks bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Omg this happened to my dad! I knew he liked the politician but luckily it caught it since I see his monthly statements and I called people I know who worked for the politician and cut it off. The weird part was I was pretty sure it was over the allowed donation limit, or about to be. It was five hundred a month to a congressman. What’s the maximum?

Anyway I think it is very easy for this to happen. Honestly you could try contacting act blue and the individual candidates and asking for the money back. They might do it. Insisting on keeping it looks bad.

To add more, I caught it after month four or five because I log in and pay his credit card bills each month. It would be good if you could get his logins and check for things like that.

[Anonymous]

When my mom went into assisted living years ago, I took over her finances. This was because she absolutely had to give it to me. She resisted giving up control for far too long, and not until a huge amount of money had been wasted (much more than $60k). If I'd known how bad it was, I would have stepped in years before, but she was very secretive and refused to share any information until disaster was imminent.

It was crazy how much stupid stuff she was subscribed to, and how hard it was to un-subscribe. Eventually I had to close her checking account and open a new one elsewhere. She'd also been scammed by various people.

It was absolutely maddening trying to get her to stop throwing money away. One time the last thing I said before I went out the door was "do not write any more checks to anyone for any reason". Then when I came back, I discovered that the very same day I left, she'd written a $2,000 check to someone. So yeah it's tough.