My 82 year old mother in law is being harassed by Sam Artists. They told her she won a lottery and sent money. She got back a little more money then she sent in, now she is being asked for more personal information and more money over the phone.
What do we do? How can we filter her incoming calls without blocking us or others such as nurses and health care providers? Should we get her number changed?
Help!
Call the police and file a report. Call the local news to do a story. Have been battling this for a year now with my 85yr. old Mom and that is what I did. The first time it happened my mother who grew up very poor and worked hard for her money she really belived this and that was not like her at all as she is very much in her right mind but they had her so convinced she won $10,000 from the government. She has always been very frugel saving every penny for emergencies and my dad worked hard for all he left her after he passed. My brother's are in another state so I had to call them right away to call her and try and stop her. I told her if you really think you won $10,000 and want to send them the $500 processing free then why are you asking us about it just do it and collect the money and be happy. She finally realized it was a scam and she would have thrown away dad's hard earned money.
They told her they were coming in person to deliver the check and to have the processing fee ready in cash. My Mom was so worried about them showing up she called the police and they staked out the house but no one ever showed just as I told her it would play out they would want her to wire the money some where. To this day she still gets calls. Won't pay for caller ID and just screens with the answering machine or hangs up on them.
I contacted our action guy that does ripp off stuff on the news and they came and filmed a story on us. I figure maybe if he talked to her that would get it in her head these are scams and since she watched this guy every night on the news that did the trick as she trusted what he reported on. While the news guy was there we called the scammers back to ask why they had not shown up with the money and they made up some excuse the guy is held up in customs at the airport and they won't let him through can you wire the money to so and so in another state.
Now yesterday she answered and someone called again and said he was coming from another part of the state to deliver the money so she called the cops and they came and took a report and called the number back and told them her lawyer is handling all her affairs and they are to deliver the money to our police station and collect the check there and the guy hung up.
Guy calls again today and yells at her for getting the police involved and she just hung up so will not be answering the phone and screening again for a long time. Every time you google these phone numbers they come back from Jamica. They are sunning themselves on the beach making all these darn scam calls to the eldery and it ticks me off.
Let me see if I can find the news clip of our story and I will PM it to you and you can show your Mom. Maybe if she sees another elderly person that went through this it might make her realize it's a scam. Fortunately m y Mom never wired any money. Mary
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