> My elderly father (86) has been scammed of thousands of pounds
> over the past few years. It started with Reader's Digest, and quickly
> progressed from there to sending off cheques to all the overseas scammers
> you can think of. We have had endless rows; his whole personality changed
> and he bacame subsumed by this addiction, spending all his time and money
> on it,the piles of letters took over his whole house, but in the end we
> have managed to get some degree of control by the following:
> 1) we stopped transferring money from my father's savings to his current
> account to cover the deficit each month, as it was costing hundreds of
> pounds; he did not really know how to access his savings himself;
> 2) we allowed the overdraft to get bigger and bigger until in the end it
> became a source of worry for the bank who started writing to him, asking
> him to come & see them;
> 3) I then wrote to the bank to explain what the problem was;
> 4) the bank asked me to bring my father to a meeting with them and bring a
> sample of the mail with me;
> 5) The adviser we saw was absolutely excellent. She was horrified at the
> (small) sample I brought.She convinced my father this mail was fraudulent,
> and advised us to take it to the police. She also got him to agree to not
> having a cheque book; in return she refunded the hundreds of pounds in
> bank charges stopped in previous months;
> 6) We went to the local police station with a sample of mail, and the
> local community support officer came to see my father. He was in full
> uniform and managed to convince him this mail was part of a serious crime
> ring which was being investigated. He persuaded my father to sign the
> form obtained from the post office to have his mail held at the post
> office.
> 7) We now collect his mail on a daily basis. We send the scam mail back
> marked "gone away". We give him the sensible mail. He was getting 50
> letters a day, it is down to about 8 now (5 months later). Reader's
> Digest are the absolute worst, no matter what letters we send them they
> still keep coming.
> We have a precarious hold, but I accept that my father will never be cured
> of his addiction and if one/two letters slip through by private courier he
> will do them. I have had to accept I can only do so much, I can't control
> absolutely everything. But he is happier in some ways - it was not nice
> for him being constantly in debt, and he had stopped taking an interest in
> anything else. Now he is starting to do housework again, and other
> things. He does miss the thrill and excitement, but I firmly believe what
> we are doing is in his best interests. I live close to my father so I am
> able to do this, it would be hard if I lived further away. My father
> shows some signs of confusion/memory loss but was still able to listen to
> outsiders (although he would not listen to us) - but some elderly people
> seem to be further gone than him, from reading other people's stories.
> But please, we must try and get Royal Mail to stop delivering such mail -
> is there a petition we can sign? And!
> the authorities must start to act together - there should be an official
> series of steps that can be taken in cases of this nature - I am
> absolutely horrified by other people's stories where they could not get
> any help from anyone; some officials seem to be helpful, others just say
> there is nothing that can be done. There seems to be a feeling that if
> they want to do it they should be allowed, in effect we are allowing
> vulnerable people to be ripped off. This is CRIME and should be taken
> seriously; we would not allow children to be ripped off; these elderly
> people need at least as much protection as children.



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