I know this is a bit long but I felt the details were important.
TLDR: I think my dad got scammed/ is getting scammed out of money. Woman/en half his age. Sudden money issues out of nowhere even though he should have over 100k in the bank from my mom's life insurance payout (on top of his own pension and SS). Weird interest in Ghana and bitcoin. Possibly paying for someone else's phone.
I have considered posting this for a while somewhere and I came across this sub today and wanted some input and maybe you guys have a better idea of what's going on. This has become somewhat of a big personal issue to me but I'll get to the nitty gritty stuff.
Background: My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2019 and received an adavce payout of her life insurance to help my dad retire early ro help take care of her (around 180k). My mom also wanted me and brother to have a small part of this as inheritance but we put it off as we wanted to make sure it was the least of her concerns. She passed in 2020.
Now to the scam. 6 months after my mom passed my dad let me and my brother know he was trying dating apps. He got stood up at his first date in our small town but I belive he persisted. I wasn't too thrilled since my mom had only just passed but that's not really the point here. A few months later he shows me a picture that looks like some stock photo from Google of a middle aged woman and he pretty much asks what I think and it comes out this is someone who has reached out to him on a daring site or app I believe. I immediately informed him that it is probably a scam and that there are too many red flags. I believe she was foreign (possibly living in the US or wanting to) and she was almost half his age. That alone bottomed out my patience and my brother felt the same. When we both told him how we feel he pretty much hit denial mode (he is very much that way). Up until this point my dad was doing alright financially. He spent some of the money on doing some things with the house that needed fixing and a thing here and there for himself but nothing crazy, from me and my brothers calculations he had to have had more than 100-120k in the bank and we encouraged him to hold onto as much as he can and just live off his SS which was fairly practical (from what we know he did not have to use that money for bills as his SS was sufficient). I can't exactly pinpoint it but he started asking me and my brother for a couple hundred dollars here and there (some lights stated going off). To make this shorter, he began asking for more but me and my brother didn't give it away freely and easily so that kind of went away. Around this time he began complaining about not having enough money or that money is getting tight. This was a different atmosphere from before where he was able to pay all his bills and there were no fiscal issues. I believe I caught him looking up information about Ghana and videos on it (I tried not to stick my nose in anything but I saw some stuff). He also began to off handedly ask me about bitcoin and how it worked (more lights). Anther weird thing is we got two big boxes from Wayfair that apparently had couches in them addressed to some name I've never heard of but to our home address and my dad said he was expecting them (and holding them for a "friend"). He tried to ship them wherever they were supposed to go and only one box made it the other was sent back and is still here. I also think he may have added someone to his phone plan. I know this all seems weird but I hope some of this makes sense as to why I belive my dad has been scammed. The main thing is he went from being financially stable to paycheck to paycheck quickly and oddly coinciding with these weird events.
Me and my brother could not make sense of why he was having all these money issues all of a sudden. And why he would come to us for a couple hundred bucks if he had over 100k in the bank. Even before all this he never really had to dip into that money but it was there in case he had to. Finally we decided to approach him about our "inheritance" (a fair amount of this decision was made by us just to see if he still had that money and didn't do something dumb with it). He pretty much said he can't give us the money right now but dodged any attempts as to why. Before all this suspicious stuff started he had no problem spending thousands on a part of the house that needed fixing and he had no troubles with bills. Now all of a sudden he is in a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. I believe he has a credit card now. He even talked about getting a loan at one point. Me and my brother pay almost all the bills in the house (we live here and he needs the help). I know this sounds like a weird situation and it's something me and my brother have been grappling with for months. What I don't understand is why someone would play a long game with a scam like this. I would assume someone would go for as much money as they can then bounce. Maybe it's been different people I really don't know.
If you read all this I appreciate any insight you could offer. I left out some other details to wrap it up quicker. Thank you again.
Edit: Already getting weird chat requests probably becuase of the money figures I included. This is a scam subreddit you smooth brained clowns, choke on dust you degenerates.
No comments:
Post a Comment