Warning...to folks who's mental capacity may not be quite what it used to be...

Some background...my mom was in an accident several years ago & sustained a head injury that has impaired her memory and her decision making capabilities. So, my brother lives with her to help out & make sure all is well. Last Thursday, they got a call from a guy who lied and said he was my son, in Spain, got in accident and needs money wired asap. Long story short, she's out $7000.00....so, if anybody has a suggestion on how she can get her money back, please let me know.

Call the police and report it!

If the money was wired, its gone. :( She can contact the police, but the people that end up with the money are quick and slick... her chances of recovery are slim to none. Sorry to not have more hope for you, however, I work in the banking industry and have seen this situation before.

If it was just wired yesterday or today, they can ask the bank to do a retrival, that it was sent based on fraudulent terms... if it is still wherever it ended up, she may get it back.

Did...not much they can do since my mom gave Western Union cash and it was out of the country. We're hoping the guy had to show ID to get the money from Western Union, but he was a pretty smart guy, probably had fake ID.

That's an aweful shame. Those kind of people will rot in @$&@. Atleast you can find relief in that.

Whats really sad is how many of those people are out there... and prey on the elderly. We have had to tell people to change their numbers because people will harass them to the point of breaking.

Kimkankwilt:
Actually.. you may want to change your Mom's number. Once they get some one to bite on a scam, good bet they will keep her number and try again. :( :(

Contact the police and change the number. Once the money is sent, it's gone. These people know just what to say and they seem to have a lot of information that they can answer any question asked of them. It's really scary!

So SORRY this happened to your Mother. These people that do this prey not only on the elderly they will try it with anyone they can. The sad thing is that they may try it again since she fell for it once they may figure they can get more money from her again so be careful.

About a month ago I had a phone call..blocked number..answered anyway...male voice said...Hi Grandma...well red flag...I DO have grandsons BUT they are 13-8 & 5 and the voice certainly was older. I said who is this....he says Michael...another red flag as I don't have a Michael grandson....I said Hello...Hello..he says bad connection Hello Hello and the phone went dead. I feel like it was one of those scams...could of been wrong number but if that is the case why didn't he say sorry wrong number?

You just have to be so careful now days and that is sad.

This happened to a friend at church...except he knew everything about the family, even recent death of dog and nicknames of other members. Police said that are rooms of people watching Facebook just looking to run this same scam. They prey on out of town Grandparents and aunts/uncles. Friend said it never entered her mind to call her daughter's house and check on gs until the jerk called back the next day for more money. Guess who answered the phone...the gs who was supposedly in bad accident several states away. Creeps!!

You should have some private, and I mean PRIVATE codes that your family will respond to. For instance, our kids were told to never, at any time, accept rides from anyone who did not know the name of our animals..Zabo and Warlock, the cats, and an even more private code, which changed after being used just once.

I got two of those letters for people I knew and had them in my email address books. I also figured out that it had to be from facebook because when I joined facebook I saw that they had accounts. Actually I think Facebook needs to take some responsibility in at least involving the FBI in this.

What about your mother's bank didn't they question such a large check our money transfer? Hopefully something can be done about this but in any case it's time for you or your berother to get financial power of attorney.

So sorry this happened, I will say a prayer that this all works out. God bless.

FIL answered the phone one day to someone saying "Hi Grandpa, guess who this is." Of course grandpa guessed one of his grandsons and the guy said yes. Fortunately grandma is stingy and said call back. In the meantime she called EVERYONE asking where Eric was because Eric was not answering his phone. Poor 15 yr old kid was in school all along, but his grandparents pretty much believed a good bit of the story.
These scam artists are really good at tricking people.

There was a case here in Australia which made our news yesterday. Similar kind of thing, except the guy told the elderly lady he was from the Tax Office and needed her to send money, then her refund would be released. He also told her not to tell her family, she actually sent several "lots" of money via bank transfer. I think the total sum was around $50,000 (she had even taken out a $15,000.00 bank loan).

Seems these ratbags are the world over, best change your Mom's number to a silent/unlisted service and have your brother or yourself co-sign her banking/financial transactions. This may be more comfortable for her than giving over total control or power of attorney.

Sorry this happened to you and yours and I hope these disgusting thieves get their punishment in the foulest way possible.

They do get a lot of their information from facebook, but these scams have been going on long before facebook was ever around!

I'm really sorry to hear about your mom's loss. Have you talked to western Union? Maybe they have a partial refund policey?

Yes report it but you may also want to change things at her Bank where it takes two signatures to move money at all. it's time.

Sorry to hear your story. Along with calling the police, contact the news. After the story goes public, sometimes your community will rally around the victim to help them recover what was stolen from them.

do make a police report. in order to claim a loss on your taxes, you have to have a police report and your reciepts for the cash sent. then next year, claim it on taxes and you'll get most of it back. that may be a little help.

how horrible. I am so sorry this happened to your mom.

oh I am so sorry that your mom was subject to these jackals! Perhaps if you do go public you can prevent it from happening to another. Please let everyone know that even though facebook can be a lot of fun it is also a dangerous place. ***SIGH*** Too bad there are not 7000 people who could all send a dollar.

this is TRUE..they got my FIL for over $30K....they were in CAnada and the FBI knew it and could do nothing to get the money back..

if they said they were YOUR son...then they also know about YOUR family....it was someone who has access to HER private info...take her offline asap and get someone to be in charge of her bank account..
once they got my FIL's info they hit his bank within a week!

this is so true...unfortunately WU is notorious for these scams and should NEVER be used!

It's too bad there has to be scum bags out there preying on the elderly.

they did not know who was answering the phone, they just got a number from somewhere and called it...IF they did know her..that is even scarier!

I am so sorry to hear this. Your poor Mother these people are really sick.

We are lucky with my 87 year old Mom who is a widow. Even though she lives alone and is still bright and alert and can take care of most of her own banking, etc, one or more of my brothers and I check up on her daily. She gets constant reminders to Just say "No." If she has any questions about anything, the oldest of my younger brothers has power of attorney and helps with them. God Bless your Mom and may this never happen to her, again. :) yes they will pay for their rotten actions as cjmomma wrote.

Yup. My Mom is 82 and has her wits about her, but is hard of hearing. We have empowered her to cut calls off if she doesn't know who it is. And no matter what, never talk business with anyone. All legitimate ones know to contact me regarding her accounts. When in doubt, hang up. It's okay to seem rude when protecting yourself.

I got an email, supposedly from a friend, her email address and everything. She was supposedly stuck in Europe, purse and money, id all stolen, needed money wired to her. Someone hacked into her email address.

My husband was a victim of identy thieft when we applied for a mortage 6 years ago. Thank heaven we have a daughter that works for Choicepoint. She got it all straightened out for him.

I'd call the police.

It's too bad the bank was not more vigilant. Older person + taking out large sum of money should be sending up all kinds of red flags.

I agree, time to have someone be a legal guardian to your mom as far as money matters.

I'm so sorry this happened to your mother. It is scary when these slick thieves succeed; & not knowing what they may know about you.

Consider the senior mailing lists out there, these thieves can get lists of just the elderly; perhaps by saying they are offering Medicare part D insurance, etc. When we moved to our current home 10 years ago, the people who moved out were seniors. Ever since, I get junk mail targeted to seniors, at first generic, but now in our names. We are not yet seniors, but I have been getting a few more scam phone calls recently & I wonder if this is the reason.

Another thing to stop doing is giving to every charity that sends something to you in the mail, or comes to the door...as my mother does. She is now on every mailing & call list imaginable. I tell her just to donate through church, as she is part of the committee who chooses where they will give. If she did this, she could save herself a lot of junk mail & stop some of these phone solicitations!

Hope the police can help you perhaps through your bank or phone records tracking.

that is so awful that there are people in this world that would do things like that I would go straight to the police

Our sherrif is always warning us about this type of scam.
Report it and make a note of it in your local newspaper to warn everybody.
such a shame!!!!!!
I got a call that a relative left me a fortune. I called my nephew up and he said he got those calls and e-mails all the time. I was very lucky to check up on that message.
They did use a distant relatives name too!!!!!!!!!!

Some guy actually showed up at my grandmothers in France. Said my mother was like a daughter to him. He knew lots about the family. We figured he opened my mother's mail to her mom. She fixed him dinner and gave him $400.

I went to a yard sale a couple of weeks ago and they had tons of fabric. I bought several bags but it wasn't really my style of fabric so I didn't buy a ton. People running the sale said it was from an elderly friend of their moms who had to move to a home. They were cleaning out her house. My daughter needs a machine so I asked if they had any. They took my name and said yes but they still needed to price them. I was in the LQS this week run by an elderly lady and she was telling me about her friend who got sick and was scammed by a family who sold all of her stuff while she was in the hospital and rehab. They even moved into her house and took her car. Police are investigating. LQS has her machines or they would have sold them to me. I took the fabric I bought to the home where she is and gave it to her. SHe was sitting there quilting and was thrilled. If you have elderly friends or parents watch out for them.

Unfortunate that this happened to your mum. Perhaps one solution could be to put a limited amount of funds in your mum's personal account so that she has 'walking around money' and put the bulk of her funds in another account that requires a few signatures to operate? This can ease everyone's minds and also ease your mother and family into a higher state of care. I know of plenty of people, who have not had their thought processes compromised, who have still been 'taken' by these sharks.All the best for the future.

I don’t understand how anyone could do something so cruel. Every so often we hear stories like this here. If you haven’t already notified the police please do. It wouldn’t hurt to let the media know, if your Mom isn't upset by making it public knowledge. I hope the money can be recovered but even if it can’t be maybe you can help stop this from happening to someone else.

I am so sorry your mom was scammed. These scumbags will pay sometime in the future, but that doesn't help your mom right now. I hope that was not her food money.

I had an elderly aunt and uncle who were scammed by people saying they would put a new roof on their house, but needed a $2,000 check up front to buy supplies. One guy got on the roof and pounded a little bit, then left.

By the time A & U realized there was no roof going on and called the police, one of the guys had already gone to the bank and cashed their check.

my MIL has Alzheimer's, she answered a phone call said from my daughter her granddaughter, thankfully FIL was there and called me to find out if GD actually called. We told them about the scam and to be very careful. So sorry about your mom.

The exact same thing happened to my mother several weeks back. They asked for $3,000 when they first called, but called back later trying to get more money. That time the Western Union guy told her it was a scam, and called my brother to tell her not to send anymore money.

I'm so sorry that this happened to your Mom...these scumbags make me say words that should never leave my lips....I hope they rot.

our whole quilt guild got a message like that, one of members was stuck in England...no one responded but immediatiely got on the phone...people are so mean sometimes...