Brother borrowed 20k without consent

Gingernutty

NANANINANOONOO wrote: »

Judging by the amounts that my bro has filtered from dads various accounts (now empty) dad has not monitored his accounts at all for the last five years and the figure missing is totting up to more than double the original 20k and it is 50k so far and may be worse.

........A pattern has emerged.......

I am now just awaiting some copies of telephone conversation transcripts (that were clearly my brother posing as my dad) before confronting my brother

Your brother has not 'borrowed' this money. He has systematically drained your father's accounts, deceived his family and the banks. He seems to have no hope of paying this off by himself and your father has no hope of getting the money back.

Did your brother have any kind of legal authority to look after your father's money (PoA, Deputyship or the like) or did your Father just give your brother the bank details and passwords?

Seriously, the police should be involved. You should not be confronting your brother. Gather the evidence you have and take it to the police.

My God! £50,000, possibly more!!

NANANINANOONOO

Gingernutty wrote: »

Your brother has not 'borrowed' this money. He has systematically drained your father's accounts, deceived his family and the banks. He seems to have no hope of paying this off by himself and your father has no hope of getting the money back.

Did your brother have any kind of legal authority to look after your father's money (PoA, Deputyship or the like) or did your Father just give your brother the bank details and passwords?

Seriously, the police should be involved. You should not be confronting your brother. Gather the evidence you have and take it to the police.

My God! £50,000, possibly more!!

No my brother had no legal authority or PoA whatsoever just my dads complete niave trust so yes dad clearly just gave my bro his bank details & passwords.

When mum died dad lived with my bro for a while and he helped dad organise paying his bills like car tax, insurance, MOT (amonst other skills my brother is mechanic) plus other general expenses, he told dad when things were due & dad wrote out a cheque & my bro kept dads papers in neat files for him. My bro has had a computer for many years and does all his own banking online so at some point he suggested to my dad that he could do his online for him too.

My dad (in his 80's) has no computer knowledge whatsoever so my bro would have set it all up & done everything for dad even organising passwords & dad would have had no concept of how much potential access he had given - this may seem niave but dad would have had no reason to mistrust my bro.

Although I always felt my dad was financially sound I had no idea how much money he had as it is none of my business. I did not know my bro had all this access only that my usually very shrewd dad marvelled at how his bills were paid Direct Debit & he didnt have to write cheques any more & I assumed this was just from his current account & he was monitoring things. I feel I have let dad down because I actually thought it was great my brother was helping dad in his way whilst I did the daughterly things like phoning dad, taking him out or shopping and including him in my family things - between us I thought my bro & I were taking good care of our lovely dad. Not in a million years did I suspect anything was wrong.

At the moment I cant see how theft can be proven in law or will be recognised by the banks because technically dad voluntarilly gave my bro a good deal of access to most of this money albeit on a trust basis.

Annisele

I think for me the key thing would be whether your brother really did intend to pay the money back - and how he intended to repay it. No idea how you'll work that out though...

If he really did intend to pay it back, then I think he's been naive/stupid/selfish/[many unprintable things], but I might be able to forgive him. If I thought he didn't intend to pay it back, then I wouldn't worry about cutting him out of my life.

The reason I ask about *how* he intended to pay it back is that I'm wondering if he has a gambling problem or some such thing? I think it would be easier to accept "addict therefore ill; brother needs help" than "brother is a thieving cretin".

macman

It appears that your brother still has two primary assets-his house and his car. Tell him to sell the car, and then remortgage the house to raise the rest of the £20K/50K to repay your father (and with interest). Clearly what you need to do first is establish exactly how much he has stolen, which you appear to already be well on the way to finding out.
Failing that you should tell him that you will report him for theft. (It' wasn't 'borrowed', and the fact that he 'might' have intended to pay it back at some point is not a valid defence in law.) You are clearly not going to keep both parties happy here, so you need to decide where your loyalties are.

BeenThroughItAll

NANANINANOONOO wrote: »

At the moment I cant see how theft can be proven in law or will be recognised by the banks because technically dad voluntarilly gave my bro a good deal of access to most of this money albeit on a trust basis.

That's for the police to decide - although it may not come to that. If you've been asking for transcripts of telephone calls, the banks may smell a rat and commence their own investigations; if they get a sniff of your brother having been posing as your dad to effectively defraud them, they'll take the matter of reporting him out of your hands.

The fact that your brother has retained his lifestyle, house, gives no indication that he ever had any intention of sorting his financial problems out; he's displayed all the tendencies of a manipulative, dishonest, fraudster.

Sorry to be so tough here, but STOP burying your head in the sand, STOP kidding yourself that your brother's just a troubled soul who really did mean to pay your dad back, and STOP delaying the necessary and inevitable.
REPORT. HIM. TODAY.

nicp60

I've been following this thread and really feel for your OP. You're in an awful situation.

Your brother was in a position of trust and abused his responsibility. It does not matter what his intentions were originally. He has manipulated the situation to ensure that he had full control and then systematically stole money from an elderly and vulnerable person. (I say vulnerable because your brother was clearly using technology and methods that your father would not be able to use)

You have to report this. If he'd stolen from a random person, or from a company there would be no ambiguity. You simply have to before he thinks he's gotten away with it and (god forbid) takes charge of someone else's finances.

What would it take? If he'd stolen 70k? 100k? Remortgaged your dad's house and lost it?

tiger_eyes

I'm truly sorry this is happening to you and your family. This must be awful. And I know you still love your brother as well as your dad. But this is so serious that I think you have to call the police.

RuthnJasper

NANANINANOONOO wrote: »

No my brother had no legal authority or PoA whatsoever just my dads complete niave trust so yes dad clearly just gave my bro his bank details & passwords.

When mum died dad lived with my bro for a while and he helped dad organise paying his bills like car tax, insurance, MOT (amonst other skills my brother is mechanic) plus other general expenses, he told dad when things were due & dad wrote out a cheque & my bro kept dads papers in neat files for him. My bro has had a computer for many years and does all his own banking online so at some point he suggested to my dad that he could do his online for him too.

My dad (in his 80's) has no computer knowledge whatsoever so my bro would have set it all up & done everything for dad even organising passwords & dad would have had no concept of how much potential access he had given - this may seem niave but dad would have had no reason to mistrust my bro.

Although I always felt my dad was financially sound I had no idea how much money he had as it is none of my business. I did not know my bro had all this access only that my usually very shrewd dad marvelled at how his bills were paid Direct Debit & he didnt have to write cheques any more & I assumed this was just from his current account & he was monitoring things. I feel I have let dad down because I actually thought it was great my brother was helping dad in his way whilst I did the daughterly things like phoning dad, taking him out or shopping and including him in my family things - between us I thought my bro & I were taking good care of our lovely dad. Not in a million years did I suspect anything was wrong.

At the moment I cant see how theft can be proven in law or will be recognised by the banks because technically dad voluntarilly gave my bro a good deal of access to most of this money albeit on a trust basis.

Oh, Sweetheart, I am so, SO sorry. I can only imagine how physically sick you must be feeling right now.

I'm not going to tell you to report him to the Police - that is your business, not mine. But I think you know, in your heart of hearts, what you have to do. Your Dad gave your brother - his SON, after all, - access to his accounts for the purpose of assistance in managing his affairs. This is NOT assistance in managing his affairs; this is stealing from him and draining a good, decent man dry in order to maintain appearances and an unaffordable lifestyle.

I am so sorry for you and your father. x

nicp60

NANANINANOONOO wrote: »

I feel I have let dad down because I actually thought it was great my brother was helping dad in his way whilst I did the daughterly things like phoning dad, taking him out or shopping and including him in my family things - between us I thought my bro & I were taking good care of our lovely dad. Not in a million years did I suspect anything was wrong.

Oh my goodness, please don't blame yourself!!
Why would you ever suspect this? No-one ever could! Please don't give yourself a hard time here. Your trust has been broken as much as your father's.
Hugs xx

Pixie5740

I used to work fora high street bank's internet banking helpdesk many moons ago whilst I was at university. Your father is by no means alone as I saw many cases where trusting people gave family members online access to their bank accounts and were stolen from. One of the issues you might face is that part of the T&Cs of internet banking is that you must not disclose your passwords to anyone else and if you do they bank won't refund any of the misappropriated funds. The account holder then has to go down the route of a civil case if they cannot recover the funds from the person who took them. If your brother signed up for internet banking by pretending he was your father that might be another matter.

They cases always sickened me at work as there was very little that I or the bank could do to help people get their money back from these theiving toerags.