alt Hacker NewsI met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems for whatever reason they have given up on SMS spam) from supposedly “cute” girls who he believed were just random young girls randomly sliding in to his DMs (this guy is in his mid-70s for the record).
It ended up that these girls would ask him for money, and he drained his savings accounts giving money to these “girls”, and even after running out of money, he kept believing these girls were real, they wanted to know him as a person, and that they just needed a little money to help out.
Everyone close to him, including his family, kept telling him these girls weren’t real, to stop contacting them. He would briefly relent, delete all his messaging apps these scammers were using to contact him, then he would feel lonely or what not, reinstall the apps, and resume contact with the scammers. It didn’t matter how many times we told him they weren’t real. It didn’t matter how much money he lost from these scammers pitching their wares to him.
He just stubbornly believed these were actual young girls who wanted to be his friend, no matter how many people told him they weren’t real, that he was just setting himself up to be scammed yet again.
I had to break contact with him. It just really angered me that this guy couldn’t believe something as basic as these girls actually being African/Southeast Asian/etc. scammers and not real people wanting to get to know him.
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People often believe what they want to believe, even bending logic and facts towards their desire. We see it all the time in politics, up to the point people vote for literal criminals who want to rip them off and they see it, but they just want to believe it's all false.
> Everyone close to him, including his family, kept telling him these girls weren’t real, to stop contacting them.
Given he had family, one remedy would have been to establish a guardianship/conservatorship on the basis of mental/financial incompetence.
Loneliness is hard. Maybe believing that it was real was the only thing keeping him going.
!!SPOILER ALERT!! in Shutter Island:
When he realizes he's committed a terrible crime, the next day he goes back to believing he's a US marshal. His last words:
- this place makes me wonder...
+ Yeah, what's that, boss?
- Which would be worse, to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?
This is a sad reality of life, that leads many, to choose a fantasy over reality. How many of us consistently avoid this trap?
reddit.com/r/scams/ has numerous and varied reports of these from the point of view of (usually) a concerned family member. It's a real plague on society. Older people who are inclined to be trusting, lonely, isolated or those with diminished mental faculties need to be extensively warned about this. Despite warnings many still engage.
need to set up better scams bilking grandad out of money and funneling to a trust for his grandkids
I of course don't know the person but are you sure he didn't have some mental problem and not just refusing to believe he was being played?
I knew a man and a woman who were in a couple and they were like this, they would believe anything that people told them because they were significantly mentally impaired and had some sort of psychological problem that was unclear. They could be taken advantage of by anyone.
It was pretty sad, in fact the best thing for them was if they were only slightly taken advantage of by people who then had an interest in taking care of them to keep the advantage taking going.
Like if someone drained this guy's back account halfway, but made sure no one else drained it, and came to see him every now and then sent him a nice greeting card. I know that sounds pretty weird to claim but I saw it with this couple, they were essentially protected and controlled by the people who took a little long term advantage, basically because the American system just lets you lose everything and go live on the streets and die if you can't take care of yourself, but if people who need a place to stay come stay with you and make sure your money gets spent on food for everyone they're actually better off. It was sad to see but also the best possible outcome given the miserable situation for them.
Anyway, these people were not fixable by being talked to, and it wasn't because they had spent so many years deluding themselves. It was because they had real problems that meant they could never understand some things.
Why not see this as him buying company? Then you'll understand that loneliness is so hard, that most people would pay a lot of money to ease it.
Ironically, instead of breaking contact, maybe the solution would have been to be there for him more.
Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...
Most of the people live in the world they invented, where they are the protagonist, naturally young girls want to talk to the protagonist, even when he's 70. You'd have to dismantle their whole worldview to disabuse them of the protagonist idea, but by 70 it's often too far gone and requires facing a million mistakes they have conveniently swept under the rug with the fairytale they've told themselves.