Ageing

Scammers Targeted My Mother Days After Her Husband’s Funeral

But perhaps it was a good thing?

My stepdad passed away on August 4th, 2018. It was unexpected and left us reeling. My sister and I rallied around our mother. He’d been an accountant, still working up to the week before his death. Luckily, we were familiar with his work and clients, so we were able to step in and take care of everything. My 80-year-old mother, at that point, was trying to get through each day, hour by hour.

My sister had got in touch with their various service companies to switch the accounts into our mother’s name. So a week after his death, my mother received a letter from their broadband/TV supplier, SKY, confirming the change. The letter had arrived and was sitting on the table waiting to be filed away.

Then she got a phone call from a woman purporting to be from SKY. They explained that her husband had held an insurance policy to protect the SKY equipment (TV box and router), and the renewal was now due. Of course, they could give a 40% discount if she took it out right now.

My mother expressed her anxiety about taking action at that moment. She told the woman she would speak to her daughter. The woman said she quite understood and would my mother prefer to talk to her manager. Not giving my mother any time to reply, a well-spoken man came on the line and, in beautifully modulated tones, explained the policy in detail to my mother and asked her if she felt reassured.

So my mother changed from a rational, logical human being into an absolute fool and handed over her banking details. They had her.

Luckily, I phoned her within a minute of their transaction, and she told me what had happened and how she was feeling doubtful. It sounded dodgy to me, so I quickly Googled. Yes, it was a scam. I phoned my sister, got in the car and drove to my mother’s.

By the time I got there, my mother had already gone to her bank, where they told her the transaction appeared legitimate and there was nothing they could do. As soon as she got home with the news, my sister took her straight back and told the bank to cancel the payment. No one argues with my sister when she’s on a mission. In the 30 minutes since the call, the scammers had taken two payments of £270 and were attempting more. The bank cancelled them, apologised, and immediately refunded my mother’s account.

Mum explained that the call seemed genuine because she’d just received the letter transferring the SKY account into her name. The scammers knew her name and appeared to know that her husband had recently died.

So either the scammers had picked up the details of my stepfather’s death from the local obituaries or, more disturbingly, they had been passed on by a SKY employee.

The scammers were thwarted, and mother’s bank account was safe. But the consequences ran deeper.

My normally confident mother was devastated. Although trivial in the overall scheme of things, this incident seriously dented her ability to cope with the grieving process. She felt lost and untethered. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for such deviousness. We told her anyone could have fallen for the scam — it was so plausible. And with the SKY letter right there in front of her, it was a logical sequence of events.

We encouraged her to get angry; it was more proactive than feeling victimised. We registered my mother for online banking, and my sister took over the running of her accounts. No one can get past my sister. If my mother needs anything other than regular grocery shopping, I order it for her. While our measures take away some of her independence, it means that no one can get at her. Her phone is set to screen all calls, and if she doesn’t recognise the number or if the caller doesn’t leave a message, she ignores them. She receives several unlisted calls every single day.

Yet three years later, she still tells us how that one call impacted her life. That she’d lost faith in herself to discern fact from fiction. She felt guilty for not considering that my financially aware stepfather would never have had such an unnecessary policy. She felt guilty for not sticking to her guns and insisting that she speak to us first. She felt stupid for not ending the call there and then. However much we reassure her it could happen to anyone, she blames herself for being old and confused.

My mother’s healthy, independent, and looked after by her family. She drives, shops, and meets her friends. Yet, the effect of that one phone call continues to reverberate in my mother’s psyche.

But at least she won’t get caught again, so perhaps it was a good thing.