Checking in: My grandma got scammed out somewhere between 250-325k. Those are withdrawals from her IRAs sent to scammers, but she also gave many of them her CC cards, so it's less clear how much MORE than that she was scammed out of.
She got exactly $0 back from bank (HUGE weekly/multi-weekly withdrawals of cash), credit cards, her financial advisor (had to approve all withdrawals - we think he might have been "in on it" because of this).
She lives (well, lived), in a small community. So, you mean to tell me that when this little old 85 year old woman who walked with a cane, is 5'0" making 10-20k cash withdrawals sometimes more than 1x a week raised no red flags in her small local bank? Come on!!
She had to call her financial advisor each time she wanted a withdrawal. Again, this was $300k in the span of about 18 months. Do you really think this guy (whose, by the way, business card says his name is Ben, when his name is really Mohammed (this has nothing to do with race, but it has to do with using a fake name as a financial advisor)) didn't suspect anything or had any idea of what was going on? I'm sure he got paid on each of her withdrawals as her account was setup with something like 1% withdrawal fees (effing crazy, in my opinion), so why would he question it? Anyways no, he "suspected nothing" and "had no idea" and he thought her "expenses must have gone up" (from withdrawing like 20k a year to 300k in a year - yeah, expenses must have REALLY gone up...!!).
CCs wouldn't reimburse anything, because she more or less authorized the purchases. They would say (not an exaggeration or joke), "We are going to purchase an iPad so we can track all this money you are sending us" and she says, "OK!"
THE REAL THING that made me upset, was when this happened, I called the county elder abuse hotline once all this came out, and the social worker i talked to refused to help. She said, "It sounds like you are upset your grandma is spending her money. She may not be spending her money in the way you would, but that doesn't mean it's illegal or your decision." SHE WAS PURCHASING $300k of REPLICA "collector's stamps" that probably don't even exist!! They would say something like, "This collectors stamp just sold for $8,000 last year - we have a replica that we would sell you for $4000 in mint condition! The $8k sale was in "average" condition! You are getting a steal of a deal! We only charge a 10% holding and transaction fee. So, for $4400 you can have a stamp [replica] that MUST be worht much more than $8000!" SO CRAZY.
We worked with police for probably 6 months before we gave up. They were honestly worthless. They kept saying, "we are working on it" or "Chuck is out of the office this week - he'll call you back next week." and then when we got ahold of someone with knowledge of our case he would say, "I'm waiting for the local police to respond where grandma sent the money." We got exactly nowhere.
We thought about paying a private investigator, but that would just cost MORE money and even if they found the people responsible, i'm sure the money is spent and gone. Not worth it. Very sad.
Good luck to you!