Scams on the elderly

Prompted to post this after seeing the dating scam thread.

An elderly neighbour of ours was scammed out of a huge amount of money via a 'lottery' scam.
She has no internet, it was all done over the phone, initially by a woman purporting to work for NatWest, who told neighbour she had won a lottery she'd never entered. But there had to be payments for 'tax' first.

Neighbour does not have even early dementia but was naive enough to be completely convinced, even after huge amounts of money had been paid.

I am certain that they got her details and had her down as suitable 'prey' because for a long time she had been addicted to those Wordsearch 'competitions', where you very conveniently phone in all your details at God knows how much per minute.

I learned after all this came to light that this sort of database is used to compile 'suckers' lists' - details are sold on for the purpose.

It proved impossible ever to convince my neighbour that she was being scammed. In the end her children had to restrict her phone to trusted callers only, and get her post redirected.

If anyone knows a person who is similarly addicted to this sort of 'competition' - presumably there are many - I'm just saying that it's as well to warn them, and to be very vigilant.

However I should add that the scamsters apparently often warn their victims NOT to tell friends or family, 'because they'll only be jealous and try to stop you getting the money.'

My neighbour was promised £1m, BTW, and over several months was scammed out of over £100k.