My sister and I learned in June 2021 that our 83 year old father was being financially exploited and abused by his live in girlfriend. At the time he lived in Oklahoma City, and we lived in California. We received a phone call from our Aunt and Uncle in Oklahoma. They lived near my father and had recently discovered that his girlfriend had listed his house for sale on Zillow without his knowledge. She had committed fraud by claiming the house as the owner and listed all correspondence about his home to go to her phone number and email. Zillow also owns Trulia, which meant the house was listed on that site as well. Our dad's brother, also our Uncle, was named on our dad's checking account as a co-signer. Our Uncle also managed our dad's estate and shared a family trust with him. Our Uncle would often make sure our dad's account was not in the red and would make sure some of his more costly bills were paid for. In other words, he would deposit money into our dad's account intermittently when larger bills were due (i.e.-car/homeowners insurance). On the day we received the phone call our Uncle had found out from the bank that he had been removed as co-signer and my dad's girlfriend had now been added as both a co-signer and joint member of the account. The banker knew my Aunt and Uncle personally and shared concerns about my dad's girlfriend and more importantly concerns about my dad. Our Aunt and Uncle had also received a phone call from their insurance agent. Our dad had the same agent and inquired several times about getting a life insurance policy. They told him each time that they did not work with life insurance, only auto and homeowners insurance. They were worried that he seemed confused and continued to ask about it. Important to note, our father already had life insurance for years. And, lastly, the neighbor was worried about our dad. She had seen the listing on Zillow and asked if he was moving. He emphatically said, "No!" and then was shown the listing on Zillow. According to his neighbor/friend he immediately appeared confused. He was then asked by the neighbor if he was now married to his girlfriend. Again, he said, "No!" It was brought to his attention that the girlfriend was telling everyone they were now married. The combination of all of these things happening at once raised huge concerns by our Aunt and Uncle and prompted them to call me and my sister as soon as possible. When we were contacted we knew that our dad was planning a trip to Florida with his girlfriend, and they had planned to leave the next week on June 28th. On the same day our Aunt and Uncle called I had talked with my dad. He shared with me about his trip. It was a 10 day trip to The Villages in Florida. At some point in the conversation he said to me, "Who knows, maybe I'll just come live with you." I was confused and thought it was an odd statement, but didn't question it. I had room in my home now that 2 of my children were grown and moved out, so I responded with, "Of course, You can always come live with us." I found out later in the day that he had told my sister not to tell anyone that he was planning to move away to live at The Villages in Florida. It was peculiar that he didn't want to tell anyone, but my first thought was that he didn't want to upset my Aunt and Uncle that he was planning to move away. Now, in hindsight, I think his girlfriend wanted him to keep it a secret. We all, my sister, aunt and uncle met several times via zoom/group phone calls to discuss what we needed to do. Because of COVID neither my sister or I had traveled to see my dad, but now that we were all vaccinated we were in a better place to travel to Oklahoma immediately. Both my sister and I called our dad to express our concerns and begged him not to take the trip to Florida with his girlfriend. We also let him know that we would be out there to see him as soon as possible. He thanked my sister for initiating the conversation about our concerns and let her know that he had decided not to go to Florida. His girlfriend went without him which made it possible for us to immediately fly out to Oklahoma to see our dad. I was planning to visit him in July anyway, but not under these circumstances. He was open to a visit from both of us, but was also feeling that we were all "ganging up" on him, and was somewhat defensive when I arrived. When I arrived in Oklahoma I was horrified to see his extreme weight loss and unhealthy living conditions. His girlfriend had moved into the main bedroom with all of her furniture and clothing. The main bedroom was huge. It had room for a sitting area, sleeping area, and office space. Additionally, there was a large walk-in closet and very large bathroom. Nothing in there was his. There were photos on the wall of herself and all of her own framed wall hangings. There was a dresser that was my dad's (he bought it special with his second wife who had passed away in 2004) she was using for her own things. Otherwise, there was nothing of my dad's. He had moved all of his things into the small bedroom (the size of a small nursery) and was using the other bathroom for himself. He had a special custom made desk that his second wife had purchased for him on his 60th birthday that was nowhere to be found. It had been placed in storage to make room for all of his girlfriend's stuff. There was custom made, very expensive, dining room table that was completely covered with the girlfriend's art supplies. Boxes were placed underneath the table with more art supplies. The walls were covered with her art along with her family photos. The dining room was wall to wall with her arts and crafts, and it was difficult to walk around in there. The living room had a small couch of my dad's and his second wife's special chair. Everything else in there was unrecognizable. It was all his girlfriend's. One small section about the special chair had some framed artwork that was my dad's. There was a large bookcase with her family photos everywhere. I knew my dad had framed family pictures, but I couldn't find them anywhere on the bookshelf or on the walls. I then noticed way up high on the shelf at the far corner a framed photo of my sister, my dad and myself. I had given it to my dad many years ago, and it seemed hidden amongst all of her stuff. She had photos in the small hallway of herself and old pictures with her boyfriend from the 1970's, Clint Eastwood (yes it was the actor). She had a photo book that she had made and titled it "My Memories". Every single photo was just a picture of her. I then realized there were no photos of my dad with her. I started to look for some sign of one, and then I saw it. There was a framed photo of my dad and her when they went to Vegas in February 2020. I didn't recognize my dad. He was even thinner in the photo. He looked emaciated. It scared me. I had never seen him so thin and gaunt. Later on I saw in his medical records that his weight was one pound away from being considered malnourished at the time the photo was taken. During a visit from my dad in December 2018 he mentioned that his new girlfriend was a "life coach" and was using him as "kind of like a client". She had him stop drinking alcohol (which I was fine with), and also had him stop drinking coffee. My dad always loved his coffee so I thought that was a bit odd and questioned him about it. He seemed okay with it at the time, and because he seemed happy and healthy I never thought more about it, until this visit in 2021. Now looking back, I realize that was a red flag on how she was treating him. I went into his office, and saw a large massage chair that appeared to be very new. When asked about it my dad said they bought it together at the county/state fair. I asked if he actually used it, and he said "no." It is very unlike my dad's personality to make such an expensive purchase let alone use a chair like that. The chair was bought in his girlfriend's name for $6,000.00 on a payment plan. We discovered my dad was making monthly payments on the chair, not her. I also noticed in his office on the far wall to the side, were two canvas pictures of his grandkids. My sister and I each sent him one respectively (my 3 boys and her 2 daughters). It made sense to see them up on the wall, but those were really the only family photos of his in the entire house. I would say that 85% of the stuff in the house now was the girlfriend's. When asked about where his things were he said that they were in storage because there was no room for anything. His small bedroom was crammed with furniture, and clothing. In the corner behind a dresser were a lot of his own framed pictures that appeared to have been removed and placed in a corner. Many of them were purchased from artists and specially framed. They were now all shoved in a corner. When asked about the checking account he said that he was struggling with his bills and simply asked his girlfriend to take care of his finances. I asked if she had her own personal account and if she closed that to share finances with him. He said she did have her own account but "no, she did not share her finances." When I went to turn on the television I noticed it wasn't hooked up correctly and he had no idea how to use the remote controls. He had been unable to access television. When I figured out how to connect everything I saw there was a netflix account. I went to check for a movie and realized that the girlfriend and her adult children, adult grandson were using netflix. I discovered our dad was paying for directv along with netflix for the girlfriend and her family. I asked my dad if he ever watched tv. He said not a lot but he did like watching the show Monk a lot. I noticed in the corner of the living room a box with a dvd collection of several seasons of Monk. Was she keeping him from watching television and made him believe he was watching Monk on the tv all the time? My father seemed very confused and overwhelmed about everything. We were extremely worried about him. The girlfriend had three cats that she left with him to care for and administer medicine to. We discovered that she had traveled for approximately 8 weeks over the course of three months prior to our visit (Mid April to Mid June). She was in Colorado, Florida, Texas and Wyoming, and now Florida for 10 days. Before she left for Florida she and my dad went together for a routine doctor's appointment for my dad. During the visit she requested to be added to the list of emergency contacts in his records. She then proceeded to ask the doctor to do a memory test. She obviously knew he was struggling with his memory. When we went to the bank to meet with the banker regarding his account we discovered he had cashed out annuities from life insurance policies. There were large overpayments made on credit cards ($800 for a $100 bill) and duplicate payments made to an AT&T account. This was based on statements since his girlfriend was added to the account. We were very concerned. We discovered that his girlfriend was trying to get on his account and have access to it since May 2021; however, her requests were over the phone because she was out of the state and needed to come in person to do so. She also requested a meeting with on of the Mortgage Brokers at the bank. Based on the Zillow listing we had reason to believe she was trying to add her name to the title. We contacted AT&T and found a bill from them, and discovered the girlfriend, her 56 year old daughter, and her daughter's 33 year old son were all on the account listed under my dad's name. They all had brand new iPhones. Plus the girlfriend had a new iWatch. Our dad had an older iPhone model, the iPhone 8, and he had two phones, one with a local area code, and the other was his phone number he had for 20+ years. He also had an iWatch which he "lost" and has no idea what happened to it. We discovered my dad was paying for a large storage unit (10'x20'). The majority of items belonged to the girlfriend. We also discovered that my dad's special custom made desk was in the storage along with a very nice couch he had with his wife. He had no room in his home for them, because the girlfriend took over the majority of the space in the house when she moved in. Along with a few boxes and a folded card table with 4 folding chairs, those were the only items that were his. The rest of the storage was packed with all of her things. There seemed to be absolutely no reason why he wouldn't be able to keep his special items with him in his home. Consequently, she was living rent free in his home and able to have free storage for all of her items. We discovered on a different checking account that he was making payments to the girlfriend for groceries and dinner. On one occasion he had paid for a $56 dinner on his bank card and then proceeded to pay her again for the same amount on the same day and listed in the memo "dinner". It appeared she was requesting he reimburse her for meals and groceries on a regular basis. While we were in Oklahoma the girl friend called our dad at night to let him know she was worried that a payment had not gone through for his Barclay credit card, and needed him to talk with Barclay to confirm the payment. The payment she was referring to was in fact the overpayment of $800 she made one week earlier. During the phone call there was a great deal of confusion, and our dad became anxious and confused. He would go into his office and close the door to talk with his girlfriend and then with Barclay's. My sister and I were still in a great deal of shock and confused ourselves as to what was happening. The next day we contacted Barclay's with our dad. Barclay had suspected fraudulent activity from the girlfriend and had shut the card down. When we found out we asked our dad where his credit cards were. He realized they were gone and we searched everywhere for them in the house. We asked if he gave them to the girlfriend, but his response was "No, I don't think so." We then suspected that the girlfriend had taken all of his credit cards with her to Florida, and believe she tried to use that specific card while in Florida and it was declined. We later discovered that she was then able to use his American Express card. There were several charges from The Villages on his card. The first few days of our visit in Oklahoma the girlfriend sent a text to our dad to share with us. The text stated that she was helping our father with his finances because he was struggling with them. She said her goal was to buy a place in Florida (The Villages) and to help him keep his home in Oklahoma so that he can live comfortably and go visit her. She continued by stating that she had "the book" (involving his finances) with her in Florida and that if we wanted to contact her she would go over everything with us. We were now very concerned. Why was his house for sale on Zillow/Trulia? Why does she have the book with her and why does she have all of his credit cards. We did not call her due to our lack of trust and concerns. At one point our father was busy on the phone with her, and I decided to go into her room to see if there was anything suspicious. I was standing by her desk and looked down to find a notepad with information about my father. I looked closer and found what appeared to be "the book" she said she had with her. She had everything noted about my father in the book, social security number, credit card numbers, life insurance policies and information about how much $ for each of them, usernames/passwords, checking account information, key events/information about my father often used for two-step verification on accounts (i.e.-mother's maiden name, favorite pet's name, father's birthdate). We were astounded and now very very concerned. He had no idea about the book and why all that information was listed on there. We discovered our father's mortgage payments were behind, and he had not paid his homeowners fees in months. His house was on lien and we needed to contact the mortgage company and homeowners association immediately. When we spoke with the HOA they said they had talked with our dad's girlfriend in May and stated that when she called she said, "I am his wife, well his fiancée, well I'm his girlfriend. Well, I'm a lot of things to him." The HOA Representative then stated she asked for information on how to pay his debt, and was given a form to complete and return. The HOA never received a form and never received any payments after that. We discussed with the HOA our concerns and requested to meet with them to work through the current situation. The next day we also discovered that our father's name had been removed from the gate code key pad to his community. We instead found the girlfriend's last name added to gate code. We requested to remove her name immediately and reinstate our father's name. We also asked them to confirm there was no one else with the same last name living there. HOA confirmed that no one with that last name lived there, and inquired about it with the facilities management team. They informed us that the name was removed and replaced with our father's name. We believe the girlfriend removed his name. As the week progressed our concerns about our dad's health safety and overall well-being grew. We were very worried that he was not safe in the house alone with the girlfriend. We had no choice but to bring him back to California to sort through everything. We immediately bought him a ticket to come back home with me stay with us while we sorted through everything. We brought the book with us to California as it had all of his personal information. We quickly had a lawyer draw up the documents for Power of Attorney. We discussed with our father and had the documents signed and notarized. Next we had our father close out his joint account with her and open a new account with my sister and myself. First and foremost, we needed to keep our dad safe. He was very worried about what to tell her. When we said, "Let her know you are going to California to visit my grandkids and daughters for awhile", he was still worried and seemed afraid of how she might react. When we got to California his behavior was similar to something like Stockholm syndrome. Approximately two days after he arrived he contacted his girlfriend on the phone in front of me. She was loud enough that I could hear her. She said loudly to him, "They will take all of OUR money." There was then a pause in the conversation and she quickly and in a more quiet tone said, "Well, they will take all of your money." She had been upset that we brought the book home with us, not to mention our father was now safe with us. A few days later the girlfriend contacted my father and said there was a police officer parked in front of the house and she had thought my sister and I had contacted the police on her. She seemed to react in a paranoid way, and accused us of calling the police. When we told our father that we had no idea what she was talking about he did not believe us, and started to get angry with us. The very next day several cars were parked at our father's house, and his girl friend along with some of her friends proceeded to load up their cars with her things. It appeared that she was moving out very quickly. During that time, she purchased storage tubs and an electronic item for $350 using our father's American Express card. He had sent several text messages to her stating the following, "Please allow (her name) to use my American Express card for money owed to her." It appeared that she had coerced and manipulated him into sending the text message. Our father did not owe her any money. During this time of overwhelming chaos for our family, we asked the girlfriend and her family members to remove their phones from our father's AT&T account. We requested a "Transfer of Billing Responsibility" for all three of them, and asked them to take care of it in the next two weeks, giving them a deadline so their phone bills would not rollover into the next cycle. The girlfriend seemingly took care of it within a few days. The daughter asked us to change the name of her 33 year old son's phone to her name, and we asked her to take care of removing the phones immediately, she became agitated with us. She then stated that her son was a "minor with a disability" (neither of which were true) which we found incredibly odd. Reluctantly, I contacted AT&T myself and asked them to change the name. We just needed them to change their billing responsibility. After the two weeks had passed I went to check the bill to make sure they were all removed. None of them were. In fact, the girlfriend had created some type of "grandfather clause" account and placed her phone on a $2 per minute charge. The daughter had done nothing. The bill was now $1500 ($1200 for the girlfriend alone). I contacted AT&T and reported the situation. AT&T honored the request to remove t$1200 charge. They recommended shutting down their phones if they do not honor our request. Almost everyday for two weeks I was on the phone with AT&T and sending emails to the daughter to remove her two phones from our father's account. Important to note-Our father met the daughter one time on a visit to Colorado. He was in the relationship with the girlfriend for 2.5 years, and during that time she had traveled and been away for at least 12 months. In other words, the relationship was not long term, and she was often absent and away due to extended travel. I had sent emails stating that we would need to shut down the daughter's phone and her son's phone if they rolled over into the next billing cycle. And, let her know the cost of the phones since our dad would be held responsible for paying them off. At the final day I contacted AT&T and had the phones shut off. She did not do what we requested, and we extended the timeframe to one month to get it done. She was able to take care of it within the 24 hours that I made the call to disconnect their services, and she was eventually able to remove her phones. I received a disturbing correspondence from her, during the entire exchange. I spent hours dealing with her and AT&T. My dad would never have been able to keep up with the high AT&T bill or continue to be responsible for the girlfriend and her family. It was extremely exploitative in nature and abusive towards our father. Once all phones were removed we were relieved, but unfortunately our father still had two phones and a watch he still needed to make payments on. As a result, we had to keep the account until he had enough money to pay off everything and open a new account with just one phone. It was now been two months since we dealt with AT&T and my father received a phone call from his girlfriend asking to be reimbursed for payments she made to AT&T at the end of August and September. She asked our father to mail her a check. We were very worried about this request and let our father know that she was not on the account anymore. I went to look at the payment history and she had made unnecessary payments to his account. We contacted AT&T and reported her to the fraud department. We also explained to our father that we would not be able to reimburse her the money due to her prior history. We did not want any money, especially checks/debit card numbers to be exchanged with her. She was not to be trusted. I sent her an email and asked that she stop asking for money from our father and that she would need to work it out with her bank and AT&T. It was not our father's responsibility. She still continued to make monthly payments and again asked our father to reimburse her. We finally were able to close his AT&T account and closed it down in December of 2021. Prior to closing it down we let the girlfriend know and told her she would need to stop making payments to the account. We made our final payment in January 2022 and noticed she was still making payments on the account. I continued to report her to the fraud department. A few weeks later we received a gift card from AT&T to reimburse us for the overpayment of $85 on the account, which was the amount she had paid. Again, I called the fraud department with AT&T and again she made a payment for $85. It was exhausting and frustrating. We continued to receive reimbursements in the form of a gift card, and then she stopped doing it in April and May. She started again from June 2022 through August 2022 and then mysteriously stopped making the payments. Note-She had moved to Las Vegas in April and May, and then moved to Florida in September 2022. Payments stopped each time she moved. In between moves they started up again. I was curious if she still had the same phone number and when I looked her up in the White Pages her phone number was listed under a different name from a previous marriage. I returned all gift cards to AT&T as we did not want anything connected to a potential scam. We had spent close to 14 months dealing with our father's AT&T account, and several of those months were spent dealing with the account after it had closed. The girlfriend also had a connection with a dance instructor in Oklahoma City. The girlfriend was a former "professional" dancer and during COVID she had asked her dance instructor friend to work with our father. According to our father he was paying this "instructor" for weekly dance lessons during COVID. Our father has never enjoyed doing anything like that which had us concerned. During COVID the dance instructor would go to our father's house often and would sometimes load a car/truck with items from our dad's house. Neighbors had made the observation on numerous occasions and shared this information with our Aunt and Uncle. The instructor was also asked to do "odd jobs" around the house and asked to take care of a landscaping project in the back yard. While we were in Oklahoma he had called our father to discuss picking up a check from him for some of the work he was doing. When he arrived our father handed the dance instructor a check for $500 and while they were talking the instructor proceeded to make a mobile deposit off of his phone in front of me and my dad. I found it unprofessional and suspicious. After further research we had discovered our dad had paid this person in checks alone $5900. Our dad was surprised and confused, and told us that he couldn't believe that amount of money over the course of one year. Plus, he had paid him in cash as well, and realized the amount was much higher. Three months after our dad was living with us (October 2021) his girlfriend would call him and ask that he contact the dance instructor about a small yard statue of hers that he was going to fix. My father was confused, but offered to call the instructor. He would ask the instructor if he owed him any money to which the instructor replied, "Yes, you owe me $500". Even though he had not completed the landscaping project he was still asking our dad for money. Was the girlfriend trying to get our dad to give money to the dance instructor who would then give money to her? Was he her money mule? We also learned that a computer specialist and small business owner was tasked to setup and connect our dad's computer to WIFI and a personal printer. Our father had trusted him since he was referred by a friend. We later discovered that our dad gave this person a bag of watches, some of them valuable family heirlooms, to get fixed. Evidently the computer specialist also specialized in watch repair? Both my dad and I had tried to contact the individual with no success. I eventually received a phone call response from his assistant to which she responded, "call back in two weeks. He is out of the office." I called back two weeks later to inquire about the watches only to get this response, "He does have the watches, but your dad still owes him a lot of money." I asked how much money since I saw a zero balance on their online invoice. She did not have a response for me, and said she would call back or I can call back in the next week. I called back and they never returned my phonecalls. I sent messages via LinkedIn and Facebook messenger to ask about the watches. No response. I contacted the police department, but since we did not photos or documentation of the watches we could not file a report. I later discovered that our dad was making monthly payments to this person and made approximately $1300 in payments to him for computer setup. While looking through our dad's financial statements we noticed some suspicious banking activity in May of 2021. During that time his girlfriend was traveling a lot, and I was often told she was visiting family. We noticed a mobile deposit was made to our dad's from a check made out to him by his girlfriend (note-this was his own personal account). The girlfriend wrote in the memo section, "Loan". There were two signatures on the back of the check on each end of the check. This was all very suspicious because our dad does not know how to do a mobile deposit and always goes directly to the bank to make an in-person deposit. The signatures appear to be forged, his girlfriend had been traveling during that time, and wrote the check to him, and the deposit was made exactly four minutes after a message from a different bank was sent stating they suspected fraud from this specific person due to a request to make a "bill pay" to her. The deposit went through and the bill pay was made 24/48 hours later for $1038.75 which was the exact amount of money in our dad's account at the time the bill pay check was requested. Just to recap that check incident; A "loan" was mobile deposit for $996 (written as a "Loan") was made to a bank in Oklahoma 5 minutes after a bank in Ohio suspected fraud by that same person. Approximately one/two days later a payment was made in the amount $1038.75 to that same person they suspected fraudulent activity from. This left our dad with a zero balance in his account in Ohio. We believe the girlfriend was out of state, possibly in Colorado, at the time all of these transactions took place. Phone records show that she was calling both banks during that time frame. On July 5th, more than one year later we learned that she had made her phone number the main source of contact for his bank in Ohio. We had been in contact with them on numerous occasions but never saw any documentation of her contact information on file or in his online portal. When we learned of it the bank immediately filed a police report for fraud. We had the police at our house the very next day along with APS. They suggested we file a restraining order on her. The family justice center turned down our request since our father continued to text her on a regular basis and the court would not take the request as serious enough.

Share all of it! The fraud, the abuse, the isolation and manipulation. Share everything I have stated in the first question. Also, share that we filed police reports in Oklahoma, Ohio and California. She continued to contact him via text/phone calls. Our dad sent her text messages all the time that were brief and vague about how he was doing and what was new with him. The truth was that he couldn't remember and did not have the cognitive ability to recall his day/week. She would send him photos of her with other male friends and share about how much they helped her with a move or took care of her. In May of 2022 she had sent a text to our father from Las Vegas. She had recently moved there and stated she was caring for a woman with Alzheimer's and how difficult it was to care for her. I was very worried for that person and contacted the police in Las Vegas to report my concerns, but they didn't want to hear about it unless I had the name of the potential victim. I then called Adult Protective Services and they had the same response. Two weeks later she sent our dad a text at around 2:30am stating that she had to move because her roommate learned she was allergic to her cats. She had lived in Las Vegas for about two months and very quickly left to temporarily live with her son and his family in S. Padre Islands, Texas. I was very worried about the safety and well-being of the person she said she was caring for. She seemed settled in Vegas one minute and then abruptly moved away the next minute. She continued to talk with my dad which made it difficult for him to move forward and to understand what she had done to him. He couldn't remember from day to day what she had done and would reach out to her like a drug addict seeking their next fix. We contacted Adult Protective Services immediately. We called the police department to report the real estate listing on Zillow along with the unusual bank activity and credit card usage. We had filed police reports in Oklahoma, Ohio and California. The police did in fact get proof of fraud on Zillow and presented it to the DA's office. The District Attorney chose not to take the case because no money was exchanged. We were even given a contact person at the FBI, but after talking with them they were not interested and never returned our phone calls after that. Our father was able to sell his house and is now able to have that money to live off of. He lives with me and my family and has his own bedroom/bathroom and an office where he can display his photos and memorabilia. Every single agency, doctors, bankers, APS, law enforcement, and the FBI have all agreed unanimously that our father was being abused and financially exploited. Unfortunately, there have been no consequences for the behavior of his girlfriend other than the fact that she can no longer abuse our father. We believe she is still doing the same scam/con with other elderly men, and will continue to do so. We have read about a recent case of elder abuse that is very similar to our story, but they are now facing actual criminal charges because they took a lot of money. It fear that the type of abuse our dad's girlfriend committed is all too common and overlooked if there isn't an excessive amount of money involved. We are grateful for our Aunt and Uncle and all of the friends and neighbors who stepped in to help our father. Had they not, I truly believe he would not be here with us today. Thankfully, we have finally been successful in removing her from any communication with our father. Unfortunately, much of that is because our father's memory has declined and he cannot remember her phone number anymore.

If you suspect anything is off or wrong trust your instincts. Call Adult Protective Services immediately. It can be overwhelming and scary. Find friends and support groups to connect with. You are not alone! Be persistent. Also, make sure to get the proper medical care and evaluations for your loved one. Our father was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's and also has other physical ailments that need medical care and treatment. Make sure to rule out any type of dementia/alzheimer's. Get as many resources as possible in your local area including the neighborhood Senior center. It's important to have a support system for your loved one and yourself. Document everything about the fraud, and share your story like I am here. The more we get the information out there the more knowledge people will have. We believe this was similar to a Romance Scam. Our dad's girlfriend was introduced to him by a mutual friend. Our dad originally met the mutual friend through an online dating site/chat room. That mutual friend is connected to the dance instructor, the computer person and the girlfriend. APS believes it is some type of ring of people collectively helping one another with their own personal scams. As I get older I see the importance of having documents such as a living trust and power of attorney all in place before I have any type of cognitive decline.

I hope the laws start to actually protect all of our elderly. What good is the law if there are no consequences for criminal actions. I am dismayed, disappointed and saddened that we spent a better part of 1.5 years talking with the very institutions designed to protect people like our father only to discover they don't want to get involved. Can we hold people accountable for their actions? It seems the victim is often left dealing with the behavior of the abuser. I am hoping someday there will be stronger protections under the law for these types of crimes.

I have purposely not added names to my information to protect my father and my family. I do not trust this person, or her family.