Falling for phone scams - When do you take over financial responsibility?

[Anonymous]

I feel like we are at a turning point. Last year, my 82 year old mom, almost fell for the 'we have a warrant out for your arrest' scam. But luckily she thoroughly confused them and asked too many questions and I think they finally hung up on her. At that point, I told her to just hang up, but she can't seem to do that. Two weeks ago, something happened and I not 100% sure what happened because her story has changed. I only found out because she went to the bank, worried that she had given out her checking information. They had her close her checking account and open a new one. She told me because I am a joint account owner and I needed to sign the new papers. We just went through the process of updating her account information with SS and her pensions. She doesn't want to have online accounts because that is how 'they' steal your money. I told her, we are in this situation because you gave out your information to someone on the phone.

She did have over $1000 in unusual activity on her credit card. So, I really think they got her to buy things over the phone. We set up online access to her credit card and I disputed the charges.

I do have POA. I use the same brokerage account firm and have let them know to be on the lookout for suspicious activity with her.

She still drives, so needs access to a credit card for day-to-day stuff. But I don't want to continue to have to deal her falling for scams.

Did you go all cash? Do I take away her credit cards?

[Anonymous]

See if you can put a per-day limit on her card.

[Anonymous]

Oooh that per day limit on a card seems like a good idea. But what about bank activity. Can you also limit that? Our family friend has been hoo-doed twice and her son works in banking! I don’t recall exactly what they did but they got control of or access to her bank (by pretending to be customer service from the bank).

[Anonymous]

I am a 35 year old lawyer who nearly fell for the “warrant out for your arrest” scam. It was incredibly elaborate, and they waited more than 30 minutes before saying a word about money (which is when the jig was up). I actually texted my own attorney while on the phone with the scammer, and my attorney believed it was legit.

Apparently once you fall for a scam, the very organized scammers sell your information to other scammers. I got multiple similar calls and text immediately following the scam.

[Anonymous]

It's time now. Isn't there a credit card where you can transfer money onto it for your mom? So maybe you give her $200 each week or whatever is reasonable for her normal activities. That way if it's taken it isn't that much, but she has enough to keep enjoying life.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies. These are great ideas. I will look into either putting a daily limit on her card or just getting a preloaded card.

[Anonymous]

We're in almost the exact same situation with my mom. The bulk of her savings is with a financial advisor who knows that no large transfers are allowed without approval from me or my brother. We automatically have $x moved to her checking account each month, and she uses that for everything - no more credit cards. Just the checking card. At the most, she can only be scammed out of ~$5-10k depending on the time of the month.

She just fell for scam recently and gave out some account and password information. It's unclear how much she actually told them because she doesn't know the difference between her email password, her apple password, and the PIN she uses to unlock her phone. My only hope is that they had no idea what she was talking about either.

Her email now has only my phone number for 2FA.

All I can say to the people who haven't reached this point - put the safeties in place now. They are aware enough to watch out for scams until they aren't, and there is no flashing warning sign when they cross that line.

[Anonymous]

My mom for a scam via one of those tax help companies. She gave them her checking account number and he debit card number. They cleared out her account and lucky her she had over draft protection so her bank transferred money into the compromised account and voila it was gone immediately. Almost $20k. This all happened right before she went on an3 week trip and I told her she needed to close her accounts but she didn’t want to deal with it before her trip. It’s incredibly frustrating. I had to change all of her auto pay accounts and came to find out that she had multiple companies doing my r same thing. Peopel would come to her door and she’d sign up. 3 year pest control. 2 year alarm system contract that she doesn’t even know how to work. Had sprinklers installed that she didn’t wintwrize and they froze and broke. Solar installed to “save $ on electric”. She fired her accountant because she could save money and do the taxes herself. Guess what? She forgot to file them for 3 years so I had to clean up that mess as well. Now just waiting to hear from the irs about how much she owes in fines and penalties. That’s if she even puts the mail aside for me instead of just throwing it away unopened. It’s awful. I don’t know what the answer is. Appointment next month for cognition tests. I know the doctors won’t do anything though. Been through this with the in-laws.

[Anonymous]

My mom for a scam via one of those tax help companies. She gave them her checking account number and he debit card number. They cleared out her account and lucky her she had over draft protection so her bank transferred money into the compromised account and voila it was gone immediately. Almost $20k. This all happened right before she went on an3 week trip and I told her she needed to close her accounts but she didn’t want to deal with it before her trip. It’s incredibly frustrating. I had to change all of her auto pay accounts and came to find out that she had multiple companies doing my r same thing. Peopel would come to her door and she’d sign up. 3 year pest control. 2 year alarm system contract that she doesn’t even know how to work. Had sprinklers installed that she didn’t wintwrize and they froze and broke. Solar installed to “save $ on electric”. She fired her accountant because she could save money and do the taxes herself. Guess what? She forgot to file them for 3 years so I had to clean up that mess as well. Now just waiting to hear from the irs about how much she owes in fines and penalties. That’s if she even puts the mail aside for me instead of just throwing it away unopened. It’s awful. I don’t know what the answer is. Appointment next month for cognition tests. I know the doctors won’t do anything though. Been through this with the in-law

OMG this is what happened to us.

My mom had two scams that emerged in the years before she was officially diagnosed with cognitive decline and thus we had no idea all this was happening. One was a couple companies (all located in florida) who called to tell her that her subscriptions were ending (nyt, new yorker, foreign affairs, etc). They were third party businesses. She gave them verbal authorization to renew but their prices were like...150$/month! and the same magazine with 2 or 3 companies. So she was losing 400-500$ a month for a couple years! She didn't really notice these charges, because they had some random name (not New Yorker Magazine) and she stopped paying attention to her credit card bills in the ways that she used to do. I think the other issue was that my brother had put a lot of thigns on autopay because she hadn't been paying her bills, but he wasn't actually chekcing the bills, so things were just getting debited from her account.

the other major scam was a charming israeli guy who came door to door to sell her on solar. He not only installed an 8 k system for 40k (and that never really worked) but also did it on a 25 year old roof that needed replacing, and then convinced her to do all this other work in her house for HUGE upcharges (like 40k instead of 4k for small things). He was not himself a contractor--in my research on him (and the trail of lawsuits in his wake) he was just a salesman and would put ads on FB for solar installers, for fence contractors, etc, So you can imagine the quality of work from an unlicensed, unbonded guy hiring other unlicensed, unbonded workers off the internet for a daily fee. I think my mom spent almost 200k on her house--a huge chunk of her savings--and most of the "work" was ripped out later (all unpermitted of course). One of the worst was installing an irrigation system that we not only had to rip out 2 years later, but whoever did it managed to hook up all the water on her street (a private drive with several houses) and she was getting--and auto paying--water bills of 1k a month--we thought maybe it was the high price of water in the drought (she lived in california) and ended up spending even MORE money to remove grass and put in a low water system, during which our landscape contractor died, having only completed half the job, and the business just folded. so it was just one damn thing after another.

all of this happened in the years during and after covid, and unfortunately at first she seemed "okay" on the phone so I didn't really know what was happening and when I would come visit she would be cheerful if scattered, but then at a certain point I found correspondence revealing she hadn't paid taxes in a couple years, that she had stopped paying her LTC, she owed money here and there, etc, and it became obvious that there was significant decline that she had been more or less masking. I immediately took over all finances, and then arranged for her to move to assisted living (and ultimately) memory care near me.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately at some point they need to be watched like kids. I really wonder how childless people survive in their old age. So much more than physical care goes into elder care