We all like to think we are smart, independent, in full control of our lives, and there is no way any of us would fall for a financial scam, like those lonely old seniors do, because “that happens to them, not to me, because I am smart.”
But the truth is, even smart people fall for it, people with master degrees, people who work in academia, people running large business… Even I could fall for this.
And how did you learn to recognize it?
My 78 year old uncle feel for an Eastern European woman after his wife passed from COVID in 2021. It started with just chatting online with her, she was a real person, he talked with her on Facetime, this was before AI was so rampant.
Then it progressed to him sending her small amount of money, like 50-100 here and there, not frequently enough for anyone to notice and he didn’t mention it at first. Then it progressed to larger amounts of money, but less frequently. At this point the family was catching on and once his son figured out what was going on, he had been scammed out of just over 50,000.
His son now has full financial power of attorney and that scammer can’t get anymore money. My uncle unfortunately has pretty bad dementia now and he does not remember losing that money.