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Dementia / Alzheimer's / Vulnerable People

Mozcom

Registered
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
595
Location
Crewe, Cheshire
After reading @DRD topic about the phone and malicious software scam, made me think and share this. I just hope it may at least help one other person who may be in a similar situation.

Last year we sadly found out due to the events that happened that my mother in law has Vascular Dementia. A very active woman, only in her 78th year who was scammed out of approximately £16K. She had somehow hidden the dementia well, but has significantly deteriorated in a very short space of time.

Her cousin noticed about the money at first as my mother in law had left a Western Union money transfer statement for £1000, to India, open on the dining table and then it all came to light.

Some scumbag had been calling her and convinced her to do the transfer. To this day we have no idea what they said to her.

We then found a couple more WU transfers and also discovered that some W****R had called by the house and said that she’d subscribed to Readers Digest but had not been paying. Off to the bank she went and withdrew £4500 and handed it over. People of that age don’t want to be in any trouble

A second visit by someone else convincing her she needed a new boiler and actually drove her to another of the branches and again £4500 in cash.

And then £300 in Xbox / Apple voucher cards at the local newsagents to someone else. Why would a 78 year old want Xbox / Apple vouchers FFS – dodgy newsagents???

Apparently the banks only flag at £5K????? Banks could not help and neither could the police.

This all happened in a very short space of time (weeks)!!!

Fortunately we had taken her iPad from her some time ago as she said she kept getting the calls like @DRD had said and she was ringing us to find out how to download the software. Just wished we had seen it coming sooner

She agreed that she needed some help. Cheque book was destroyed, and arrangements with the bank that her account was flagged at £100. Anything over needed to be checked by SWMBO.

We also purchased a Trucall unit (https://www.truecall.co.uk/ no association with them) Filters 95% of nuisance calls – web based – brilliant piece of kit
A EZVIZ indoor camera (https://www.ezvizlife.com/uk/category/wi-fi-indoor-cameras/16 again no association) monitoring the front door with motion detection and instant email alerts to whoever.

Fortunately, we have not found anything more only that after then moving from her home into and independent retirement village that her condition has worsened and has had to move again into a full time dementia care home.

Power of attorney has been granted, but my mother in laws condition will only get worse.

Again, I hope this helps anyone who may be in a similar situation to ours.

Act now, put things in place. They don’t need to have dementia / Alzheimer’s, these scumbags will target any vulnerable person and I hope whoever they are have a very, very slow and painful death!
 
@Mozcom, great post.

Very sorry to read your tale. I saw this sort of thing as members of my family got old and eventually died.

It can be so difficult to even have the conversation with those you love. Some elderly folk take enormous exception to any suggestion that they might need a hand with their finances. I saw a once fiercely intelligent and savvy family member enter into an outrageous property option arrangement with a ruthless developer.

There are thousands if not tens of thousands in the UK who earn a living ripping off the elderley. Whether it is unscrupulous: property developers, double glazing, stairlifts, pension scams, £1,500 vacuum cleaners, bogus roof repairs ....

The person I know who fell victim to the malware scam was a mid 40s hospital consultant !

I would never dream of leaving 50 grand in a box at home. Yet millions of people have no idea how vulnerable their internet banking and investments are and you can be talking about much more than 50k
 
We did look at others but this you can set up to auto update after every call - was trialled by the Trading standards - automatically blocks robot, overseas, PPI calls etc . Very easy to set up and monitor from anywhere in the world. As she is now in 24 hour care she will not require it sadly. There are others, was just the one we went for.
 
Cheers @DRD and @Mercifull - one one hand you can say what is the world coming too, but when the Mother In Law went AWOL thinking she was 28yrs old and off to university, some wonderful person came to the rescue and knew she needed some help.

I know it's your own money but surely more can be done to stop this? make people more aware somehow? And yes, you don't have to be old for it to happen. Two stage verification for most things now, why not banking / investment changes etc???
 
Sorry to hear about your MIL.

The thought of getting dementia scares me a lot. I think we've all had moments where we've forgotten something and it's taken a brief period of time to remember, or woken up abruptly and not been fully aware that you're awake. The idea that this could endure for longer than a fleeting moment is truly scary.

Your tale is just sickening really, it shows the depths to which scammers will sink to. Absolutely zero compassion at all.

On a more practical note - things like 2FA etc only reduce the risk of someone trivially accessing your account, it doesn't stop someone from being tricked into paying for something they don't need, or getting their PC taken over or keyloggers, etc installed. In this digital age letting a stranger into your computer, phone, etc is no different from giving them all your ID documents, etc.. in fact it's probably worse.
 
Too true @Durzel - I also read somewhere that a chap had fallen asleep on a plane and his wife used his fingerprint to unlock his phone only to find he'd been cheating on her - daft P***K for cheating on her in the first place -but just goes to show the harder apparently they try to stop others getting your data, the easier we want to use stuff like bio metric tech, the easier it is for others to steal stuff :hmm:
 
I think for the elderly especially who didn't grow up with tech maybe given it for ease from other family members to keep in touch, facebook, instagram, viber etc? They have no understanding of these scammers and lets be honest, many can be on there own for many hours a day and just want to talk? More needs to be done but how?
As many pubs and clubs shut down where many of these ppl used to go and could chat to others, where are they going now? TV adverts work to some extent, day centres with free advice maybe, flyers ???
 
Had experience of this. Couple of years ago. My blood is still boiling. Perpetrator a lot closer to home than a random stranger though.
 
I'd like to try and do my bit but not sure how to approach maybe the Care homes / day centre's. I am CRB checked already due to work - do I just contact them and see if they are interested in me giving a talk on the dangers of scammers ??? Anyone know any printers who would help to do some free flyers maybe as most of the stuff these days is all downloadable which doesn't help
 
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