Investment scam, …elderly parent

zenshi

Thanks all for the advice. I have passed it on to him and hope he takes it on board. I have a niggle he partly believes it’s genuine.  I’ll probably have a road trip tomorrow to deal with his bank in person. I live couple hours away and they’ll only talk to me with his permission, quite rightly

zenshi

Sometimes the only way to get through to him is by being very blunt!

hotncold47

Not sure if you mentioned it but make sure he hasn't loaded something on his phone so they can access it.

BooJewels

If you haven't done so already, is it time to address the idea of him taking out an LPA, so that you're able to register it with his bank and be able to log in and check on account activity as and when required.  Not a speedy solution, but maybe time to have that conversation.

I had an elderly aunt who was scammed out of a lot of money and whilst she had an LPA and my sister and I were her Attorneys, we hadn't yet registered it with the bank as she was managing fine.  But that incident frightened her and she lost all confidence in her ability to manage.  I pretty much left it alone from there, but she did love that she could ring me and ask if a payment had cleared, or I could do Internet shopping for her with my card.

Robin9

Does he still have an old style phone. ?

If so change it for the ones that have call blocking built in .  Then programme it just with the family and friends numbers.

arfster

ColdIron said:

arfster said:

Martin Lewis actually sued facebook in 2018 over this exact same scam:
Martin Lewis settles lawsuit as Facebook agrees to donate £3m to anti-scam charity and launch new scam ads reporting button

Why do you think it was the exact same scam? There are no details. MLS won a defamation suit against Facebook not a scammer so it's unlikely that this course of action is available to the OP

It's one large group running this from eastern Europe, has been for a decade - instantly recognisable. They're been temporarily based in Bulgaria, Georgia, Montenegro, Serbia and others, but it's probably the Russian mob ultimately at the top of the chain. Law enforcement have been after them for ages but has had little success.

The Chinese/Cambodians/etc pig butchering orgs are the famous ones, but these guys were doing it long before (and more focused on Europe).

Fundamentally it works because social media corps couldn't give a toss, they just take the money for years and years, and let people get scammed.

zenshi

I’m not sure if he’s loaded any app etc on phone or tablet.
We do have LPA registered but not yet got it linked to banks 
he has IPhone 8

we have had that conversation and I have access to his landline account which he’s happy with. My fingerprint is enable for Touch ID on his devices so can access his bank account but only when I’m with him

fwor

zenshi said:

He gave £200, thankfully a relatively small amount.

That's really good news - it's a trivial enough amount (in the overall scheme of things) that you/he can simply write it off. The difficult thing may be convincing him that he's made an error. 

I can recall a few years back trying to explain to an 80-year old that the lottery scam letters that she was getting dozens of were all scams, and I left with the distinct impression that she didn't believe me and thought I was jealous that she was getting so many wins!

jaybeetoo

My father was scammed out of £10,000 over 10 years ago.  It was one of the first indications he had dementia.  I’m not saying your father has dementia but if you and your brother don’t have Power Of Attorney, I recommend you persuade your father to set it up asap even if you don’t need to invoke it straight away.

friolento

jaybeetoo said:

My father was scammed out of £10,000 over 10 years ago.  It was one of the first indications he had dementia.  I’m not saying your father has dementia but if you and your brother don’t have Power Of Attorney, I recommend you persuade your father to set it up asap even if you don’t need to invoke it straight away.

They already said they have POA.