Bummertown, USA For years now, my grandpa's been trying to get rich.
→[More:] Not by playing the lottery, but through the schemey gimmicky fraudy "contests" they do through the mail. Publisher's Clearing House is just one, the Canadian lottery is another I've heard mentioned. Essentially, there are many that he is a part of, likely in the double digits. He sends them money hoping to receive money. Today he called saying he needed a lift to the currency exchange to pay taxes on a very large check he will be getting on Monday. So, paying taxes on money he does not have, and will not ever have. At one point about a month ago, my mother realized the magnitude and literally had him talk to the FBI about this hoping he'd realize. They told him, of course, there are no mail lotteries in the United States and that he needed to close his bank account and change his credit card numbers (he has already been a victim of identity theft through these "contests"). So after he spoke with them, he told us that they had set him straight, and that he learned his lesson on his own.
Now, though, it's started all over again. He's back to calling us a bunch of skeptics when we explain how none of this is real. We're at our wits' end. My mother now watches his bank account online, but today she spoke of actually legally handling his finances for him, as he's showing us more and more that he is not capable of doing it any longer.
Any thoughts on how this can be managed? Similar things you went through? It just makes me so sad that people are preyed on like this, and that he's so vulnerable to it.