The Petunia Chronicles

  THE PETUNIA CHRONICLES

It is disheartening to admit that my grandmother is constantly falling victim to scams and giving away money she can’t afford to lose, especially because I work at Legal Assistance for Seniors and try to keep her well informed about the dangers of unscrupulous people. Whenever I call and talk about what I’ve learned at work, she gets secretive, edgy, and says, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” and laughs. I just keep talking.

 I should have done more, should have called more often. I know this now, because the scammers have been calling at least every other day. She trusts them more than she trusts her family.  If my mom, who has power of attorney, asks to see her checkbook, Grandma Petunia can’t find it. She claims she doesn’t have problems balancing her checkbook; “they” just don’t tell her about the charges. She has been convinced by newly befriended scam-artists that if my mom asks to see the checkbook, it is because she wants to know how much she and my father will get when Petunia dies.

 My grandmother is isolated from her family by a number of states. She wouldn’t talk about finances with us until she one day asked my mom to send a money order to her on a Saturday.  She wouldn’t say what it was for, only that she needed it right away. My mom became suspicious, so she and my dad went to visit. My grandmother wouldn’t let them near her computer. She was anxiously awaiting phone calls, but couldn’t or wouldn’t say from whom. My parents realized that there was far more going on than they had suspected. 

 Here’s what else you need to know about my grandma:

• She’s never had to work.
• She feels that people should give her things for free, and that it is possible to get rich quick.
• She is proud and fiercely determined to remain independent.
• She is 86 years of age.
• She has broken her hip twice, but is still mobile and lives alone.
• She owns her home.

Here’s what we’ve found out in the past 5 months:

• She has maxed out credit cards she didn’t know about.
• She was paying her bills without looking at the charges.
• She’s over $14,000 in debt and doesn’t know how that happened.
• One of the reasons she has so much debt is because her bank account has automatic overdraft protection. Someone created fake checks with her account numbers and wrote them to different people and the bank kept covering them for hundreds of dollars.
• Multiple people are involved and are billing from different companies with the same bank account number.
• When my father made inquiries about her savings account, the bank said she had closed it out by purchasing a money order for the entire balance.

If you suspect that a loved one is being financially abused and the victim of a scam, call us (for Alameda County residents) or your local Adult Protective Services. More importantly, try and educate your loved ones before they fall prey to telemarketing and internet scams.

For more information about current scams and prevention methods, check out the following websites.

http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/cyberhome.htm
http://da.co.la.ca.us/seniors/crimes.htm
http://ag.ca.gov/bmfea/pdfs/citizens_guide.pdf