Has anyone had a widowed elderly parent that was catfished?

This will be a public service announcement for those with elderly parents who have a substantial amount of money to protect.

My mother passed away 3 years ago. Before she died, my sister and I got together with my parents and their financial advisor and got authorized access to their money. We were put as authorized users on the bank accounts, the investment accounts and set up Power of Attorney status for both of us. Both my sister and I are financially secure in our careers and don’t need our parents money. With that being said, we still wanted to take steps to protect them from what could be predatory situations.

Just recently, due to extreme loneliness, my father somehow managed to begin speaking with people online. They were conversations that started about a year ago. These were people he claimed were folks he could just have casual conversations with and wanted nothing more. At that time, I warned my father that they were attempting to catfish him and that they would try to get money out of him. My father, still of sound mind, with some bouts of memory loss, told me there was no way it would happen to him. As time moved on, he began getting an emotional attachment with a couple people that he spoke with.

Thankfully, I have another family member that has been living with him all this time and has been able to keep somewhat of an eye on his activities, like watching over him while he was texting these folks on apps like telegram.

After gaining my dad’s trust, these people began to talk about money with my dad. It started out with them trying to convince him that they could invest his money for him into some crypto accounts that would yield him more than his investment advisor was doing. They would lure him with thoughts that it was a partnership and that they would one day be able to be together. They would somehow convince him that they would invest the same amount as he would as a show of good faith.

It first started with him transferring money into a Cash App and then they would convince him to move the money from the Cash App into a management account that had some sort of a web address of where to send the money. They even went as far as to create an account he could see that would show they also put 50k, as a show of good faith, into an account that was his.

Knowing he was speaking with these folks, I began monitoring his bank accounts more closely. Once I saw money going into a Cash App, I questioned him. He got very angry with me to the point where he changed passwords, Isolated himself from me in every aspect. He removed me from his glucose monitoring system, his life 360, everything. I had thoughts of letting him lose all his crap because I felt like he needed to be taught a lesson.

The initial movement of money consisted of about 5,500 dollars into the Cash App and then into some crypto accounts he thought he had some access to or was able to monitor. This must have not been the case as I noticed he transferred some 2700 dollars back into his bank account. This signaled to me that he may have realized he was scammed and moved money back out of his Cash App back into his bank account. When I questioned if he realized he was scammed, he would tell me that he didn’t get scammed and he still had the money, which I knew was a lie.

Thankfully, due to my tech savvy family member staying with my dad, I was able to regain password access to his bank account. Since I was already on the account, I knew I would always be able to monitor it but I never had my own access. I would just use his. My sister, at that time, had also notified the bank of what was going on and they advised her to move money out of the checking and put into savings, which she did. All this got reversed when he realized what we did. We were basically trying to prevent him from losing large sums of money. In my estimations, he had already been scammed for about 4k.

Fast forward a few months later and I hadn’t seen any activity in his account. I thought he had come to his senses and wasn’t going to be giving anymore money to these folks until I noticed more transfer of money into a Cash App. This time is was 200, then 1800, then 2k. My family member then notified me that my father had applied for a sofi account. He was then able to obtain my fathers phone while he was asleep and got evidence of conversations where he was going to set up a sofi account, give joint access to this person, and deposit 150k into the account. As a show of good faith, this person was also going to deposit 150k into the account. These people are ruthless in their tactics.

Thankfully, we caught it in time and finally decided to move all but a small amount of his money into my sisters account that she has with the same bank. We set up an intervention with law enforcement to let him know of others who have been catfished for amounts exceeding 250k.

He is now only able to access his money with our approval. He does have a large amount in investments that he is unable to access very easily without discussing details with his financial advisor. His financial advisor is already in the know of what has been going on and has even had discussion with my father about not investing with anyone he doesn’t know.

Even after the intervention, he has attempted to contact these folks. They also have his phone number and he even went as far as to text them another app method of conversing with him. I finally got my tech savvy family member to block his access to the App Store and will be attempting to put my father into an apple family account where he would have to access any apps if he wanted one. It’s crazy we would have to go to this extreme but the emotional attachment these folks can create is a tough one to break. The next step, one we are trying to avoid, is to get his phone number changed.

The damage done, due to this catfishing, was around 7k but it could have been much worse. If you have elderly parents, get involved early. Set up protection methods for their money. Don’t ever think it can’t ever happen to one of them because that’s how I felt with my dad. He was always a sharp investment guy, made a lot of money in his working years, and was one of those guys that could have gone on Jeopardy and succeeded.

If anyone else has a story they would like to share and the steps they have taken with their parents, I would love to learn what more we can do. I have learned that we can get the secret service involved and I also contacted the elderly abuse hotline and was able to get a list of other interventions that we could do if necessary but completely gaining access to most of the money he has immediate access to seemed like the first reasonable solution.