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Scams on the elderly

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Welshwife Mon 16-Apr-18 14:07:08

My friends mother was taken in by something like this and she was also buying all sorts by mail order. When she died my friend found loads of unopened parcels and drawers full of new cashmere jumpers - luckily her size!

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fourormore Mon 16-Apr-18 13:55:14

Bless her heart - it's cruel how these people work.
It is so hard to convince our elderly to 'trust no one' - they are so vulnerable.
Our elderly neighbour has no dementia or other problems but constantly falls for all the rubbish circulating these days. She came to me one day asking if I had a 1st class stamp.
She was going to post a reply paid envelope back to some company and said categorically that she was in with a chance of winning £15,000 and has as good a chance as anyone! She reckoned that if she put a 1st class stamp on it her chances would be increased as hers would get there before the others.
She buys a lot by mail order so her details are passed around to all and sundry and we cannot get it through to her how this works.
We tried to put her off but she was adamant and the envelope was posted 1st class. Sadly, we are only neighbours, she is entitled to do what she likes and we cannot tell her what to do.
If anyone has suggestions on how hubby and I can get her to understand we'd be grateful smile
Sadly her family is the most disfunctional in the world so we can't do anything through them.

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Witzend Mon 16-Apr-18 11:46:05

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.

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