I apologize but this may be a bit long. Mind you, this started around November of last year.
My sister is severely mentally ill. She lives with my dad (who's a single parent) and doesn't really get out much. They're a HUGE fan of WWE and looks forward to the events. Her all time favorite is TJ Perkins. She used to spend most of her time on the internet and that's when she started looking up dating sites and looking up ways to contact TJ Perkins. Eventually, after a while, she found someone who claimed to be TJ Perkins. He began to talk to her and convince her the usual song and dance about sending them money or a gift card to help with their family or some other BS. She started buying gift cards with the money she was getting and sending him the codes. She even went to Walmart to wire cash to him until she got flagged for money laundering and my dad was contacted by the cellphone company saying she racked up a bill of a wopping $700 in international calls. He was LIVID. (Luckily, the phone company was able to help him out.)
They went to the police, (where the cop was HELLA fuckin rude and asked her directly if she was mentally ill in the worst kind of way.) and they basically told her she needed to stop because what she was doing was illegal. After the cellphone bill, my dad cut off her data and took her computer away so she wasn't able to contact them. My dad then had to take over her funds because she was literally draining her check to give to send to the scammer. He told her that if she needed anything to ask him and he would gladly get it for her. My dad tried to explain to her several times that she was getting scammed and that the person on the other end was not TJ Perkins and that he would never be asking for gift cards or money and that she was being used but it never stuck apparently...
Today I saw she was charging her phone in the bathroom and got a few text from a contact named, "my darling husband!!!" It said, "baby, send me the codes." And "baby, go get bitcoin atm" (I have no idea what the heck that is so if anyone knows, please tell me.) and "Baby, I need Amazon gift card. Now!" All of her replies are basically long messages of her saying she can't wait to get married and that she loves him and she's sorry she can't send stuff and doesn't want him to get mad at her and yell at her. (I guess he's calling her too and yelling at her when she doesn't do what he says.)
I was pissed scrolling through those messages of my sister just spilling her guts to this guy and only getting responses asking for codes. I didn't really know what to do but block the number since I had her phone in hand but I'm sure he's just going to contact her another way...
My question is, is there anyway we can ask the cellphone company to block any numbers that aren't on a certain list or maybe restrict her data usage? I guess maybe like a kids mode or something? I just have no idea what to do to help her understand...
TL:DR - My sister is getting scammed into sending gift cards to someone posing at TJ Perkins. I blocked the number but I know they will be contacting her through a different one. Can we do something to stop this?
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