My elderly widowed father was scammed!

Yeah wait till ya get to work on Monday.

newacc2015 wrote: »

You could have just changed locks on the door. She was a lodger not a tenant. If she changed the locks on you. All you had to do was get a locksmith out and throw her stuff on the kerb. She had/wouldnt have tenancy rights

I don't see how your fathers age is relevant. There is gold diggers taking advantage of people of all ages.

We did change the locks and my father gave her a new key.
Doesnt matter whether I was right or wrong.
She was isolating him form everyone and moving in.
Perfect MO according to Gardai and Age protection people!

Longer version!

I will be deliberatly vague as Gardai are involved.

A few years back my mother died. After the initial heartbreak etc my siblings and I turned our attention to my father to make sure he didnt go off the rails etc.
His close family,extended family and friends made sure he was doing ok. And for all intents and purposes he was.
Then my siblings and I started noticing an EU national girl hanging around more and more. She was in her mid to late 30's.Fair enough. My dad has still got is full faculties and had his life to live.
Slowly his health started to decline. Well he was elderly after all and we are all mortal.
I stepped back a little but two of my siblings kept an eye on him.
He started to act odd. Getting secretive. Missing appointments. Dumping family engagements to head off with this , what we now know as a, scammer.
Alarm bells started going off.
This scammer now had Dad in her pocket. She was conatantly playing the poor mouth. But somehow got a new ( not a 151 but new to her) car.
She was starting to spend an unusual amount of time both with my Dad and in the house.
She was supposedly in College a good distance away!
We started to try and check out her stories but they either didnt check out or couldnt be verified.
When ever she was questioned about her past she either dodged it or was uncannily vague.But had told my Dad a sob story. Dad took it hook,line and sinker.
My Dad has a pretty decent private pension on top of the govt one and the house is in a really nice area and is worth a couple of hundred grand!

Fast forward a year or so to present day.
This scammer was now playing ,lets call them Sibling 1, off my dad telling sibling 1 my Dad had agreed to let her move into the house as she was having problems with her lodging.No such agreement was made. The scammer then told Sibling 2 that this was all agreed. Sibling 2 rang my father and told him what was going on. My father made the excuse about her accomodation and told sibling 2 that he believed the scammer. She had successfully driven a wedge between 2 siblings and my father. Due to personal experience that I wont go into here,I had stepped back a while back but was kept up to speed.
At this stage the scammer was moving her stuff in saying that she had to be out of her lodgings by December and she had trouble getting anywhere else to stay as she had Rent Allowance and no one would let her have a place to stay.
Sibling 2 then rang the housing officer in the Uni but the officer couldnt confirm any personal details due to Data Protection. Fair enough. But the officer said that there was no shortage of rooms for students in the area and if anyone ,especially a foreign national, was to become homeless they would have them in lodgings by the end of the day. The scammer was pedalling the story that she was about to become homeless.
Then suddenly instead of having to be out of lodgings by December she had 2 days to be out and was ,underneath everyones noses, moving in.
Nothing was right here.
I decided to speak to my father in a way I never thought I would have to.
I had a couple of things in my favour here.
I knew how to speak to my father and get a point across. Something my other 2 siblings couldnt really do now.
The scammer knew nothing about me. I had met her once but was 'neutral' in my dealings with her. She didnt know how to take me.She didnt know anything about me etc.
As I mentioned before I have previous experience with something similar.
I went straight down after work.
Pleasantries and the usual how are you etc were exchanged.
I told Dad I was going to the toilet but was going to see where the scammer was.
She saw me and gave a cheery 'Hello'.
I glared at her and grunted. I turned around and locked the door between where she was and the room where my father and I were sitting.
"Dad I need to speak to you!"
"About what?"
"About whats happening here"
He went to mute the tv but I told him to leave it on (in case the scammer tried to listen in)
I had to take control of the converstaion and keep emotions out of.
Summary of the chat:
'Dad if you let her in to live here and give her a key to the house ,give her permission, you are in deep trouble. When you go back into hospital for a few days there is nothing to stop her from changing the locks making some sort of wild accusation against you and then you are fooked. This house ,and Dad this has nothing to do with your will or anything like that, is yours. Think of all those days when you broke your balls working to pay the mortgage to keep a roof over your head. (I delibratley kept foucussing in on him. Not the fact that it was where we grew up. Where him and Mam lived etc but him. Emotionless)'
He told me he never really thought of it like that and appreciated me to speaking so bluntly.
I hammered home the fact that this is now happeneing. I told him the incident which I referred to earlier. It was someone we both new but had to sell the house to get rid of someone. He was a bit shocked.
'Dad. Your friends are your business. Your finances are your business and everyone respects that. Doesnt matter whether we like it or not.We respect your decisions but I am making you aware of the consquences of moving a stranger in. It deosnt matter what you think,what we think , what she thinks. She will have rights on this house and there will be fook all you can do and you will be fooked. And Dad if she offers to pay you rent it will be worse. few lads I work with havent paid rent in a year and the landlord will either have to take them to court at his own expense or sell the house.Simple as that.'
It looked like the point was sinking in.
I told my Dad that I was going to ring all my siblings when I got home so they knew what I had said so no one could played off each other.
I got home and spent the next 2 hours on the phone.

The next day as I was on my way down I got a phone call from sibling 2.
"Guess what?She is packing her stuff and getting out"
Me. "WTF?"
"Yep.Sibling 1 went down and she was stuffing as much stuff as she could into her car and asked the scammer 'Are you coming or going?' and she said going."
As I got there the scammer was leaving and I decided to follow her. She copped I was following her and she drove straight through a red light on a major junction to lose me.
Whatever happened after I left she got completley spooked and went form moving everything in to taking what she could and scarpering.
That was a few days ago and she hasnt been back.

Turns out she 'visits' and old folks home on the weekends ( and possibly other times) to help and volunteer. Sibling 1 rang the volunteer agency and told them ,without naming the scammer, what had happened and to be very careful.

In her rush to leave she left some vital documents which the GARDAI have and are going to follow up on.


Keep an eye on your elderly parents and follow up on anything suspicious.

Sorry for the long winded post but it needed to go somewhere form my brain.
koutoubia is online now Report Post

arayess wrote: »

i had my doubts about the story but now I'm confused.
How do you know the inner workings of your fathers knob?
seriously

Doctors told us.

Deleted User wrote: »

It kinda sounds like you were scaring him to protect the inheritance!

Cos what you said the was completely wrong. She wouldn't get any rights to the house at all. Even if she paid rent, she might have rights to notice and so on, but she doesn't get a "right" to squat. It certainly should not mean "selling the house".

And you would let a complete stranger waltz into your eldelry ill fathers house, sepeerate hime form friends and family and listen to porkies.