Protecting Elderly Parents From Scam Artists

[Anonymous]

Last week I was at my elderly Dad's house fixing things and I came into the house to find him on the phone with somebody from India claiming to need his bank account information to 'keep his TV working'. I took over the call and it was a very obvious scam.

I called the bank and put an alert on it should anything come in and I cancelled the landline phone (something I should have done years ago.)

Are there any other steps I can take to protect him from crooks?

[Anonymous]

Run a credit check on your parent to make sure nobody's taken out credit in their name. Put a freeze on their credit so that nobody can borrow money in their name.

Check their phone account monthly to see if they're getting a lot of spam calls and block them.

[Anonymous]

We monitor all of our parents bank, investment and credit card accounts. We have the login information for all of it. We did this after my dad lost quite a bit of money to a scammer. We also set his phone to only accept calls from contacts. I occasionally run a credit check to make sure there is nothing strange going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We monitor all of our parents bank, investment and credit card accounts. We have the login information for all of it. We did this after my dad lost quite a bit of money to a scammer. We also set his phone to only accept calls from contacts. I occasionally run a credit check to make sure there is nothing strange going on.

PP. the investment accounts are set up so we (the kids) get a call if they’re trying to take any money out of it. We also have POA for all accounts. It was a long process to get everything set up and you have to have the parents buy in, but it’s worth it.

[Anonymous]

Crooks will also come to the door. They will say they are “working for your neighbors” and decided to stop by.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crooks will also come to the door. They will say they are “working for your neighbors” and decided to stop by.

You can get a doorbell camera so at least you might have a picture of the scammer's face.

[Anonymous]

My brother ended up completely taking over my Dad's banking because my dad kept falling for scams. The final straw was when my dad fell for a scam where they claimed to be an agent with the social security administration, and that my dad's identity had been compromised and used to money launder for drug and child sex trafficking rings. They claimed they needed my dad to give them $31,000 in cash to get him a new social security number. And my dad did it!!! He withdrew $31,000 in cash and waited outside his assisted living facility, and dropped the bag of cash in the back seat (through an open window) when the car pulled up.

At that time, my brother had already been monitoring my dad's accounts, and paying the bills, but my dad still had access to his own money. After that scam, my brother basically had to go through a process (with the assistance of my dad's doctor, signing that my dad was incompetent) where my dad now can not access all of his own money. My dad has a debit card to a specific bank account. My brother keeps $2,000 in it for my dad to spend, so at least now the most money he can lose is $2,000.

[Anonymous]

Good luck. It's going to get easier for their accounts to get hacked and drained very soon

[Anonymous]

My dad lives with us, and this happens all of the time. If he's falling for these things, you need to take control of his finances.

[Anonymous]

My business provides this scam service for older people, who are an easy target. Unfortunately, the scams are getting better. I use AI to review text messages, email, and mail quickly.

Most phone plans have features to restrict incoming calls only from those in their contacts. Do that.

You might have to lock access to your parents. This means having most mail and bills come to your address. They rarely have anything urgent.

Having multiple checking accounts is also helpful.

[Anonymous]

Agree with all of the above. Monitor the doorbell cam for who is trying to gain access. Don’t make it easy for your elder parent to put down a deposit for useless home improvement scams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crooks will also come to the door. They will say they are “working for your neighbors” and decided to stop by.

Agree. My parents had many people come to their door and they were all scam artists. They're in a CCRC now so one less worry.