A Place for Mom's Family

On Clark Howards website, a new scam directed at seniors:

This is really great information Linda, I wish there were a great way to get this information directly to the seniors.  Well done.

Thank you for sharing this with us Linda. I am a caregiver of my mother and I have seen the cards from AARP come to my mothers mailbox. Of course I just toss them, but a few years ago, my mother was lured by a scam such as this and it really wrecked her bank account because it was a "Sweepstakes" scam where she was to send them money to get her "winnings" and each time she sent it in, the more they kept asking from her.

My father was alive then and he wasn't even aware of what she was doing at the time until he went to reconcile their account and she could not confirm or remember what she had done. They did finally get it straightened out, but I can see where such as this can ruin a persons financial situatioin very quickly.  

Thank you so much for sharing this story.  It is so very important for family or caregivers to help monitor checkbooks or account information for their loved one to ensure that they are not being taken advantage of in any way.

My grandmother was paying a cleaning lady 4 times the amount that would normally be charged for a monthly housecleaning each week!  We were mortified that this person would take such advantage of a senior!  My grandmother was making her lunch every week and the cleaning person would share the sad stories of her circumstances with my grandmother.  Even though she thought there was a mistake in the charge, she was led to believe that the person was dependent on the money and didn't want to hurt her.

Despite her pleas to our family that she really loved my grandmother, she didn't continue to stay in touch with her once we terminated her services.

I think that this made my grandmother feel vulnerable and foolish and that is so unfortunate.

I believe that this type of fraud occurs so very often and it is heartbreaking!