A true story

The topic of financial elder abuse is rather closer to home than I might have wished. During this research project, my 94-year-old mother, and then subsequently my 95-year-old stepfather, fell for a financial scam. The scam consisted of a letter arriving in the post telling my mother that she had won US$800,000 in the Publishers Clearing House (PCH) sweepstakes. All that mother had to do was pay the taxes of US$800 and a cheque would be sent for the US$800,000. This is, of course, where mother should have become suspicious. However, PCH does run a sweepstake prize, and the letter certainly looked legitimate, containing the logo of PCH. All that mother had to do was go to Western Union and telegraph the tax money; this, she did, even though my stepfather by then was suspicious and warned against this action. Needless to say, the winnings never arrived.

My sister and I probably never would have found out about this, as clearly my mother felt humiliated for falling for this scam, but for the fact that they were then inundated with telephone calls and further letters saying that they had won money. Not knowing how to stop the calls and the mail, mother eventually revealed what had happened to my sister. My sister and I were both horrified and felt guilty. We felt guilty because we had never thought to warn about scams of this nature. One of the reasons for not discussing this with them was because they did not have a computer, and both of us were unaware of the number of very sophisticated scams that are sent through the post.

As if this was not bad enough, our stepfather then fell for the follow-up scam. He received a letter from a ‘company’ indicating that they understood that mother had been scammed and they were now receiving nuisance telephone calls and letters, and that for a fee of US$300 the company would intervene and stop the calls and letters. He paid the fee. Luckily my sister found out about this in time to stop the payment. However, he then received nasty letters threatening legal action if he did not make the payment.