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cvalue13
·Yesterday my mother lost her (meager) life savings.
If you think it can’t happen to your loved ones (as I did until 24 hours ago) it might mean your guard is too far down.
Talk to your (especially elderly) loved ones NOW, because an ounce of prevention may avoid a ton of cure.
In my mother’s case, it happened via a scam involving people on the phone causing her to withdraw all of her money from the bank, then deposit the cash into several bitcoin machines around town. Because the perpetrators also convinced her that her mobile phone was not to be used because it was “hacked,” she performed all this leg work (over the course of 4-5 hours) while not contacting me or anyone else for a dose of reality.
Now, if reading the above summary first and foremost elicits the feeling that my mother is - well - an idiot, you’re not alone and I needn’t have it pointed out any further here. To fully exercise this first instinct of condemning my mother’s judgment, I’ll further m admit that the summary I’ve provided omits several astonishing details that, if told, would only further justify your first instinct. In all, it’s embarrassing to admit, even on this anonymous forum, the ludicrous nature of this scam and the resulting indictment of my mother’s judgment.
Despite that embarrassment, the point of this post: until 24 hours ago I would have disbelieved my mother was capable of such incredibly tragic judgment, and you might hope to avoid a similar error.
In my family’s case, it’s not as though my mother was financially independent in any deeply meaningful way, but there has also been a mental cost. On one view, her “life’s savings” were relatively minimal (less than 6 figures). Still, that money did represent for her what little financial independence she’d managed, and to have been duped into just handing it over has put her in a tragic mental state.
Which is the other lesson learned the hard way by us, but for free to you here: once this sort of scam is perpetrated on your loved one, the financial loss becomes of perhaps secondary importance to the mental and emotional damage. After-all, your loved one also believed themselves incapable of such poor judgment, and must then come to grips with the consequences.
Consider not being overly confident in your loved ones. Have a chat with them now, tell them my mother’s story, or however else you feel best plants a seed in their minds to be deeply skeptical of anything involving any third party discussing their finances/accounts/crypto whatsoever. If your family balks at the implication that they could be so naive, so be it - my mother also would have balked at it 48 hours ago, but it quite possibly would have saved more than her money.
If you think it can’t happen to your loved ones (as I did until 24 hours ago) it might mean your guard is too far down.
Talk to your (especially elderly) loved ones NOW, because an ounce of prevention may avoid a ton of cure.
In my mother’s case, it happened via a scam involving people on the phone causing her to withdraw all of her money from the bank, then deposit the cash into several bitcoin machines around town. Because the perpetrators also convinced her that her mobile phone was not to be used because it was “hacked,” she performed all this leg work (over the course of 4-5 hours) while not contacting me or anyone else for a dose of reality.
Now, if reading the above summary first and foremost elicits the feeling that my mother is - well - an idiot, you’re not alone and I needn’t have it pointed out any further here. To fully exercise this first instinct of condemning my mother’s judgment, I’ll further m admit that the summary I’ve provided omits several astonishing details that, if told, would only further justify your first instinct. In all, it’s embarrassing to admit, even on this anonymous forum, the ludicrous nature of this scam and the resulting indictment of my mother’s judgment.
Despite that embarrassment, the point of this post: until 24 hours ago I would have disbelieved my mother was capable of such incredibly tragic judgment, and you might hope to avoid a similar error.
In my family’s case, it’s not as though my mother was financially independent in any deeply meaningful way, but there has also been a mental cost. On one view, her “life’s savings” were relatively minimal (less than 6 figures). Still, that money did represent for her what little financial independence she’d managed, and to have been duped into just handing it over has put her in a tragic mental state.
Which is the other lesson learned the hard way by us, but for free to you here: once this sort of scam is perpetrated on your loved one, the financial loss becomes of perhaps secondary importance to the mental and emotional damage. After-all, your loved one also believed themselves incapable of such poor judgment, and must then come to grips with the consequences.
Consider not being overly confident in your loved ones. Have a chat with them now, tell them my mother’s story, or however else you feel best plants a seed in their minds to be deeply skeptical of anything involving any third party discussing their finances/accounts/crypto whatsoever. If your family balks at the implication that they could be so naive, so be it - my mother also would have balked at it 48 hours ago, but it quite possibly would have saved more than her money.
