TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE ELDERLY

Be it the internet or by phone or in the mail - it all is the same when it comes to fraudulent offers from unscrupulous manipulators of the con game. My mother, before she died, was victim to these cons on more occasions that I even know. The cost of her old school trust of total strangers was in the thousands of dollars. One of the most heinous was her believing a fraudulent charitable solicitations. She gave these parasites her banking information and that was all it took for the theft to begin. I have yet to read about this sort of crime in all of the many anti-rip off sites I read regularly. Her bank account, the one that was for her monthly Social Security check only, was hit with hundreds of 'electronic drafts' from bogus companies. Living in another part of the state I only heard about this as her complaining about these strange charges on her checking account that she did not understand. I told her to call ther bank and dispute them. She told me that she tried, but was given the runaround and never got a straight answer from anyone. She was in her 80s and she was in the beginning stages of dementia so I tried to gently urge her to ask for a manager and not talk to a teller. She just did not have the where with all to stick with this attempt to file a complaint and the electronic drafts continued and became larger and larger. The bank did absolutely nothing to help her. Eventually these electronic drafts began to empty this bank account. My mother did not know and did not understand what was happening. Again she tried to get the bank to help her and they did nothing. She started to bounce checks when paying bills. That caused the bank to issues overdraft penalties to the tune of $15 per bounced check. On top of this my mother believed that all of the sweepstakes solicitations were for real and was sending in 'processing fees' that varied between $9.95 up to $59.95 on average. In her addled mind she really thought that she had won something. I kept telling her to stop and warned her that they were scams, but she refused to believe that and kept trying - entering many foreign sweepstakes as well as local ones in the U. S. across the country. By the time she reached 84 she became very ill. I had to go to take over her affairs and close down her house. It was then that I discovered how much fraud had taken over her entire life. The electronic drafts were as large as $495 by this point. She had also wired large sums of money overseas to some con man in Australia. I had to shut down her bank account to stop the weekly theft of her money. I filed a complaint with the bank, but they did very little to help. They told me they only went back 90 days. One woman indignantly told me it was my mother's own fault for not dealing with the fraudulent charges when they showed up in her bank statement. I was furious. These con men continued to call and send mail. She got many of these legitimate looking checks and was told in a letter that this was her up front money and more was coming. How many of these she cashed over the years I have no idea. I took all of the fraudulent electronic draft check receipts and called the phone numbers on them, but they were all phony. I tried to file complaints with as many states as the mail was sent from. She actually got two checks from one state because she was on the mailing list of a fraud ring they had shut down. I was notified by another state of a fraud ring they had shut down, but never heard another thing from them. I am sure my mother will have checks waiting for her in uncollected funds files from states across the country. Sadly, she died. My greatest gift to her so she could die in peace was to take care of all of her financial affairs, pay off every single debt she had and closed down every credit card account, charity account and whatever else I could do so she owned not one penny to anyone anywhere. I filed complaints where I was able to. We are all going to get old one day and my warning to everyone is to never give out your personal information to anyone for any reason that you do not know and cannot verify 100%. Never believe any sweepstakes that you get in the mail/e-mail. Do not send money to anyone nor accept checks from people who write to you from foreign countries. A sucker is born every second of ever day because we all want to believe that all people are basically honest. That is what con men and rip off artists worldwide are depending on - your naivety and ignorance. Educate yourselves and . . if it sounds too good to be true - IT IS A FRAUD!

Wendy, CA