When I first moved in with Mom in 2012 to be her caregiver, I was astonished at the amount of mail and phone calls she and Grandma received from businesses and charities asking for donations. Sister M. warned me of Mom's bad habit of staying up all hours of the night watching QVC and HSN, then calling in to order whatever it was they were selling, sometimes ordering multiple items at a time. She had two carpet shampooers and three vacuum cleaners in the front coat closet, plus a brand new vacuum still in the box sitting in the living room as evidence of her out-of-control spending.
Sister M. told me about a time when Mom saw a commercial advertising some kind of emergency car kit, and Mom thought they were such a great idea that she ordered one for herself, one for Grandma, and one for each of her kids for Christmas presents. I bet the sales rep that got Mom's call was happy! Sister M. intercepted the delivery, called the company to cancel and return to sender, and got Mom's money refunded.
I have the following entry in my journal dated January 14, 2013:
Grandma and I were sitting on her couch in her apartment chatting when the phone rang. Mom was sitting in Grandma's recliner next to the phone, so she looked at the Caller ID, then picked up. She listened for a long time as the person on the other end talked--I assumed it was a family member in New Mexico calling with an update about Grandma's sister, who had recently suffered a fall and was hospitalized. But when Mom said, "The most I can do right now is twenty," I immediately stopped talking to Grandma and asked, "Mom, who's on the phone?"
She threw me a dirty look and refused to answer, so I stood and walked over to her.
"Credit," Mom told the caller. "Okay, hold on."
I panicked. "Mom! Who is that?"
She set the phone down to go get her credit card so I asked again who it was. "I don't know, ask them!" she dared. Either she was being defiant or she actually didn't know to whom she was speaking.
"Mom, you can't afford to make a donation right now. Just tell them 'No, thank you.'"
She stood defiantly, turned on her heel, and walked out. I picked up the phone. "May I ask who's calling?"
The caller answered, "This is Barbara from Ross Parsley Ministries."
"I'm sorry, my mother isn't able to make a donation at this time. Could you please cancel her pledge and add our number to your Do Not Call List?" Barbara begrudgingly obliged. I thanked her and hung up, then went to go find Mom.
"Mom, you can't be making a donation every time someone calls you! I've warned you about how dangerous this is."
"I can do what I want!" she said, stomping her foot. She stormed off to Grandma's apartment while I went downstairs to get her morning medications. When I returned, Grandma's door was locked, so I knocked. Grandma kept her door unlocked during the day so that we could come in any time, so when it was locked, I knew Mom had done it.
"Come in!" Grandma hollered.
"I can't, it's locked!" I tried to yell loud enough for my hearing-impaired grandmother to hear me. "I need to give Mom her medicine!"
"I'm eating breakfast!" Mom yelled, "and I'm not ready to take them now."
I decided not to argue while Mom was in a pouty mood, so I sat at her kitchen table and ate a bowl of cereal. Thirty minutes later, Mom walked to the pantry where she proceeded to load her arms up with food.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm bringing my food to Mom's--SHE can cook for me!"
"Oh, so now you're mad at me? Mom, I've told you before how dangerous credit card fraud is, especially over the phone! Scammers specifically target seniors, and you're no exception. Besides, Sister M. said you need to rein in your spending and you can't be making donations to everybody who calls on the phone!"
"I don't like being told what to do or being treated like a child!" Mom stamped her foot.
"I'm not trying to tell you what to do and I'm not treating you like a child, I'm trying to keep you safe! To protect you! That's why Husband G. and I are here. Besides, you didn't even know who the charity was you were donating to!"
"I did too! I've seen the number on the Caller ID before, so I know I've donated to them before."
"No, Mom, I don't care what the Caller ID says, you don't know if that caller is legitimate or not. I worked for the phone company for nine years, I know what I'm talking about! Haven't you heard about how scammers call and trick people, especially seniors, into thinking they're donating to a charity and it's so they'll give their credit card over the phone, and before you know it, thousands of dollars of unauthorized charges show up on your credit card bill? It happens all the time! You don't EVER give your credit card number over the phone when someone calls YOU! If YOU call a legitimate company and they need your card, that's different, but you NEVER give out your card number if someone calls YOU!"
"Whatever!" she dismissed me and started to head for Grandma's apartment with her arms loaded down.
"No, Mom, don't just say, 'Whatever!' This is important, you need to hear what I'm saying! You need to understand."
"Well, I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Alright, you let me know when you're ready to talk about it then." And she went to Grandma's, locking the door behind her. It was her passive aggressive way to tell me--in not so many words--to leave her alone, end of discussion.
I don't tell her this stuff because I'm a dictator! I tell her to protect her! There are so many scammers out there, and she and Grandma are both at risk because they're mentally unstable and "softies." And they don't know how to say No! Especially Grandma!
A month later while sitting at a traffic light on our way to a doctor's appointment, I received a text from Sister M., "Do you know anything about these make-up kits that Mom ordered? I just got one in the mail addressed to me, but it looks like Mom ordered them. It's not her regular Discover card number on the order form. Did she get a new card?"
After reading the text, I turned to Mom, "I just got a text from Sister M. about some sort of make-up kit? Do you know anything about it?"
Mom's posture stiffened and she crossed her arms. "I ordered them!"
"How? I took all your credit cards away."
I had told Sister M. about Mom's close call with the charity on the phone and my concern she was going to get scammed, so M. told me to take all Mom's credit cards and ID cards and hold onto them for her. If Mom ever asked me for a card, I was to "supervise" anything she did with it.
"Mom gave me her card."
"She GAVE it to you or you TOOK it?" I clarified.
"No," she got defensive, "I asked her for it and she gave it to me."
I was livid now. "Oh, so it's not enough that I had to take your credit cards away, now you're convincing Grandma to surrender her card to you whenever you want so you can charge up her card?" And of course, Grandma would never tell Mom 'No'!
"No, I told her to deduct my charges from her rent check."
I was flabbergasted! "Mom! Taking away your credit cards is for your own protection! You don't just go behind my back and trick Grandma into letting you charge stuff on her card!"
"Well, I wanted it, so I asked Mom to let me use her card."
"No, it doesn't work that way! If you want to charge something, you ask me for your card, and then Sister M. or I will determine if it's something you need. If not, you go without, you don't act sneaky and charge it to Grandma's card behind our backs, then tell her to deduct it from her rent!"
"It wasn't something I needed, it was something I wanted! And don't tell me what to do! It's MY money and I'll spend it however I want to!" she argued. "Besides, I didn't feel like arguing with you about it!"
"I bet you don't because you know you did something you weren't supposed to! Since when does a 70-year-old woman, who has rarely ever worn make-up in the past to begin with, need to spend that much money on make-up? Especially with all the other make-up you already have in your bathroom! You are being deceitful, and you owe Grandma and me an apology!"
She never did apologize, and I had a stern talking-to with Grandma when we got home to not give Mom her credit card. Grandma is just as rebellious as Mom, though--all in the name of maintaining independence, of course--so my admonition probably went unheeded. Turns out, the make-up was a "subscription deal," and Grandma got upset when the charge continued to show up on her Discover card statement for the next several months. Sister M. had intercepted two more deliveries the next day (which were addressed to Mom) and called the company to cancel the current order and any future deliveries, but it took months for Grandma to get the charges to stop. I refused to help her--I wanted Grandma to learn a lesson from going behind our backs to "help" Mom.
I had printed up several pages of scam information off the Internet, especially scams directed towards seniors, and shared it with Mom and Grandma in the days following. Every charity and solicitor who called the house, I would politely tell them we weren't interested in donating, and to add our number to the Do Not Call List, and went on the national registry and added our home phone number to cut down on the solicitations. Junk mail from religious organizations, food banks, Indian reservations, various missions, and so forth continued to fill the mailbox (she still supports World Vision and St. Jude on a monthly basis), but I simply burned them in the fire pit and didn't let Mom see them. I eventually started burning Grandma's junk mail too. My efforts have put a considerable dent in the amount of paper waste that arrives in our mailbox, but it has taken almost five years. Grandma would complain about the requests anyway, claiming she couldn't afford any donations, and yet a "receipt" or "thank you gift for your donation" would arrive in the mail. I was fighting a losing battle!
It's obvious that many loved ones who suffer from dementia or other mental health issues cannot properly discern what is legitimate and what is fraud--whether it's telemarketing, investing, sweepstakes, or even dishonest family members. That's not to say that every charity is illegitimate, but if Mom donated to everyone who asked for money, she wouldn't have enough money to pay her bills. As caregivers, it is important that we protect them from these piranhas by screening their phone calls and vetting their mail as much as possible. Protecting them may require obtaining Power of Attorney or Guardianship. If your Loved One lives at a different address than you, put in a change of address so that all their mail comes to you. Set up their bills on auto-pay, especially if they're skipping payments or paying twice because they forgot they already paid the bill, and gain control over their checkbook so that they can't write a check to every Tom, Dick, or Harry that asks for money. I've heard from many other caregivers that their Loved One was "talked into lending" lots of money to family members who had no intentions of paying them back. But even professional caregivers need to be watched--a former classmate discovered that the person his family hired to take care of their mother was stealing from her, and they took her to court and won!
So be careful out there! Unfortunately, your Loved One with dementia or mental illness probably can't understand the danger, so the best protection is prevention!
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