My grandpa, 84 yo, recently lost his wife of 61 years to an aggressive brain tumor in March 2015. We had some time, 3 months, before her passing to help assist grandpa with getting up to speed with household management as grandma handled everything household related.
Within a month after her passing, grandpa met a woman at the senior center and after one visit, she quickly became a regular household visitor. Grandpa would take her to expensive restaurants several times a week which was very uncharacteristic of his financial expenditures. It was within a week of their meeting that he was confronted and warned by someone at the senior center of her money scheming intentions. But grandpa, deathly afraid of being all alone, refused to take heed. Needless to say, the family is not happy at all.
Fast forward 5 months, she is at his residence every day. She has requested he buy her glasses, take her on vacations, buy her a new car, take her gaming (and give her money to gamble because "she is luckier at the casino when she gambles with other's money") and she recently asked him to add her to his checking accounts. We've done a little research on her background and found she has a gambling addiction, previous troubles with unpaid taxes, SEC8 housing, and a bad reputation for being a swindler. She has convinced grandpa that his family is awful and only wants his money. He has met with a lawyer and revoked his children's financial access. From what we can tell, he's out a minimum of $40K in 5 months without any explanation of where the money has gone.
Lawfully, there is nothing the family can do about this as he is willing giving money to her. While we, the extended family, can clearly see her true intentions, Grandpa desperately doesn't want to be alone so gives in to all of her requests. He has stopped taking his medications and refuses to see a doctor. Soon, we imagine, he'll stop taking our phone calls as well as she has convinced him that his family is no good.
While he is quickly loosing his entire life savings, we feel like we are losing the patriarch of our family.
Is there anything we can do?
One of the men had "given" her all of his mother's valuable jewelry which my sister proudly wore during the "relationship". After the breakup she refused to give him the jewelry back, but in the end she did - I think she was forced to, threatened with legal action. Then her next conquest was widower that owned an apartment complex, so she moved in with him and took advantage of the free room and board. After a couple years under his roof she secretly became involved with a doctor on the side that was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. She eventually dumped the apartment owner and went full-time with the doctor. He looked like a better prospect apparently - they ate in only the fanciest of restaurants and she traveled all over the world accompanying him on his "conferences". He collected valuable art, and "gave" her a few paintings that she hung in her apartment. This apartment she kept was to appease my parents, as she really lived with the doctor but rented an apartment so as not to look like the skank that she truly is. You see, that was important to her because her next victims were to be her own parents, who she talked into appointing her executor and trustee of their estate. It's such a long story and I'm trying to be brief here, but back to the new boyfriend - after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's she continued to be his signif other. My mother used to tell me my sister was well-provided for in an "agreement" she had with the old man. I think she told my parents that to make them believe my sister was not after their money, which was approx $1Million, since she was supposedly set to inherit all this money from the doc. The Doctor had two daughters in their late 30's, one that he had given POA to several years prior, and they thwarted my sister's master plan by secretly swooping in one day - out of the blue while she was at work - and told their father they were taking him to a doctor's appointment, but they instead took him to an Alzheimer's care facility and checked him in. My sister had no idea they were going to do this, and although she was very much against it there was not a thing she could do about it. He died a year or two later in the facility, and his daughters got everything. I believe they did this to pull their dad's estate out from under my sister's control and influence and lock her out of his assets. I believe she was spending on his credit cards for quite some time - I witnessed her shopping using his cards many times. After his death they demanded his paintings back and she of course resisted, but in the end she gave them back. Nothing like a little legal pressure to get her to do the right thing.
Anyway, never to be alone, she had a new "love" already lined up before the doctor was checked into the home. He looks like she found him under a bridge, but he has "...a very wealthy aunt in NY" I am told (by my mother). I forgot to mention that I haven't spoken to my sister since my father died 8 years ago - another long story. So now she concentrates on my parents' estate and since his death she has total control of our mother. The first thing she did was got her name added to our mom's bank accounts. Next she got our mom to gift her $30k for a downpayment on a house - poor thing had never owned a house before. Then the house needed a new kitchen remodel, so she got that paid for as well. Together she and our mom dissolved the Trust that our dad had set up and accompanied her to the lawyer to redraft her will. None of the rest of us have any access to any documents, so she is the only one of four sibs that knows the terms of the will. Together, she and our mom liquidated the mutual funds our dad had in a brokerage account and got our mom to buy two annuities in her early 80's from the "nice" financial advisor at her bank, locking up about $500k. One is a 7 yr maturity, the other is 10 yr. Nobody except my sister knows who is listed on the beneficiary page of those documents, including our mom. She, as one could expect an 80 yr old to do, signed them without reading them, and until she asked me to read them several months later, she had no idea she had bought TWO annuities! So I read them over but never did see a beneficiary page, so not sure if my sister removed that before I was shown the documents.
Anyway, I could spend days laying out the whole saga, but you get the idea. It gets boring after a while. Maybe one thing you can try is to get POA and then you will be able to call the shots for your father. I forgot how old you said he is, but if it's not too late that may be something you could try to pursue. I thought my sister's old man's daughters were pretty slick in the way they swooped him out from under her without even his hired nurses knowing what was going down, and were able to keep her from hijacking their family estate. I totally empathize with the pain you have been going through, Support4Gpa but these kinds of predators are good at what they do. Your dad is definitely a victim of elder financial exploitation and you know who just might be interested? The medicare and medicaid people because this woman is essentially "spending down" his assets and he will eventually end up dependent on their services for his care as a result. So they might just do something about it, or be able to advise you and offer some ideas and resources you haven't already tried. Hugs and best of luck to you and your family. I know very well the hurt you feel .
We spoke with the courthouse and they said the previous civil warrant is no longer active. We opened an investigation with the local police department. We even opened a personal ad for Grandpa to help him 'move on' from this woman. He's not interested. Quite frankly, we feel defeated. He now takes this woman to the casino about 5 days a week!! We were going to contact her children about her 'gambling habit' which we knew would bother her that we knew of her children but that hasn't worked out well. We can't find any working phone numbers. I've focused my energy on building a community garden in grandma's name.
You might also explain that she's using your GF's money and he's almost broke (whether he is or not) and that as a family you would intervene to ensure that he's not held responsible for this woman's debts, and her gambling debts (if any) would likely remain unpaid.
Maybe if the casino managers think she's going to run up debts that won't be paid, they'll think twice.
Since he doesn't want to "sit home and stare at the walls", can you create a program whereby members of your family take him someplace different on a regular basis, even if it's just out to lunch? It might help break the hold this woman has on him.
And even though I think this is underhanded, it might be worth it: when someone has him out for awhile, get security cameras, voice activated if that's possible, to monitor her when she comes to his house. You may get evidence of her asking him for money.
Honestly, I'm not sure it's legal, but it might be used to "convince" her to leave him alone as well as to let her know you mean business. This woman seems to be very, very determined.
We set grandpa up with an online senior dating profile. I don't know that it was the best move but our intent was to show him that the grass is greener. He refuses to let go of 'scammer' because he doesn't want to [in his words], "Sit home and stare at the walls". He seems pretty excited about it but he too busy shuttling 'scammer' to the casino to really delve into it. This is all so exhausting. We are interviewing potential private investigators this week. And fueling up our energy to battle the Senior Center.
Thanks again for ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT, EVERYONE! So appreciated!