My Dad Was Conned

This article centers around the person/persons who conned my dad.

I'm not sure exactly what they tried to get from my Dad but I'm sure it had something to do with money. That's usually what a con man is after.

Today I go to my dad's and I get a phone call from someone identifying herself only as Jennifer and a little friend of my dad's(my dad was 86 years old so this wasn't a romantic interest, she sounded young). She wasn't nice, she wasn't even polite or professional. Later I confided to someone that this shows just what kind of slime ball people my dad had gotten messed up with.
I tried to get my dad to have nothing to do with these people but I don't know if out of loneliness he succumbed to their niceties. Maybe he was frustrated and angry that I wasn't around as much as he thought I should have been. Whatever the case he got hooked up with people that were no good. I tried and that's all I could do. I could not tell a grown man what to do.

This is frustrating. This caused quite a few fights between myself and others. For anyone who has went through this or is going through it now you understand how frustrating and just how diabolical and manipulative a con can be. Don't think for one second that just because the person/people you are dealing with act nice and pretend to be your friend they are. They are anything but your friend.
A con will say and act any way he has to to get what he wants. Most cons want money, some want power and control and some want both and some just want whatever they can get their hands on. Many have drug problems they must support and this is where anything they can sell comes in.
In my case the con(unfortunately I'm finding out now there was more than one) were only interested in money and they didn't care how they got it. If they could con my dad into giving it to them they took that route, if they had to steal they did that.
When my dad's con(I'll call him HM) moved out he took everything he could put his hands on that he could get by my dad. My dad later confessed that he had taken a gun my dad owned. My dad was afraid to report it because it was unregistered and he thought he would get in trouble. I tried to explain that due to the guns age(it was very old) that it most likely didn't need to be registered and the police would be more interested in an unregistered gun on their streets. My dad was still hesitant and scared. He was also most likely afraid of the con man as well.
This con walked out with not only the gun but alot of my dad's tools.
I've still to find out if he tried to con my dad into signing something. The family was very afraid of this.
This is not uncommon when people are elderly. Someone moves in on them and before you know it(manipulators) the con is living with your elderly parent and there is nothing you can do about it. You try only to find out you can't run the con out of your parents home, there is nothing you can do because the con is an invited guest of your parents. You're left with your hands tied with everyone looking at you to do something. The only thing you can do is attempt to have your parents declared incompetent to handle his affairs in a court. This is not only stressful on you but your parent as well and useless if he/she isn't considered legally incompetent.

Why does an elderly person let someone(not a family member, essentially a stranger) come in and take over letting the con have and do whatever he/she wants to do? Unfortunately, that's not an answer I have. But many elderly people get lonely, they think the con man is trying to help them when in reality they only want to get what belongs to the elderly person but the elderly person doesn't see this. One main problem standing in the way for the elderly even if they are sharp and otherwise on top of things is health. Unfortunately, many elderly people suffer from a myriad of health problems which keeps the majority of their time occupied.
In my dad's case he went to many doctors for a variety of problems as most elderly do. They often take many pills a day something my dad also did. At one point he was taking 21 pills a day then the doctor cut it back to 18 pills a day and for a long time he took that many pills a day. Eventually the doctor took him off alot of the tablets but he still a number of medicines a day plus over the counter stuff as well. Who knows how all these pills affect a person? Who knows what effect they have on a person's thinking?
Another thing with my dad was he had just lost my mother when the con moved in.

I tried to do all I could but it wasn't enough. I had my own life and work, etc. Today's society simply doesn't allow for these kinds of situations. They don't allow for the parent that needs to stay at home with his/her child. It doesn't allow for the child who needs to stay home with a parent or even just give more attention to a parent. And it's not just the workplace that poses the greatest risk for people with aging parents, it's everything else too. Nothing slows down. Everything is fast paced. We live in a multi tasking, do it all society where essentially when it comes right down to it everything is falling by the wayside.
As the old saying goes," Every thing's going to Hell in a hand basket."
Many people may think this is being over dramatic but it is not. Look around you. What do you see? Does everything run super smooth every day? Is everything running as it should each and every day?
We should be moving toward a better tomorrow but in reality we are moving toward a bleaker future.

I don't believe technology has helped today's society. Sure all the gizmo's we have are cool and they do help us but at what cost? At the cost of our families? More money is helpful but at what cost? In a perfect world there would be no hunger, no blight, no famines, no flooding, no bad stuff whatsoever.
Most people do not want to see the reality of the world we live in because if they did it would make them want to jump off the tallest building they could find. So instead most bury their heads in the sands and pretend all is well with the earth we live on.
Don't get me wrong I'm one of those people that would rather believe everything is right with the world than face the problems. They are too much for one person, they are too much for a hundred people. It is depressing. All in all most things today are depressing if you really take a good look at the world we live in.

For dealing with elder problems such as these there are no easy answers but you must spend as much time as possible with your parent especially after the loss of a spouse. This is an extremely difficult time and one I did not understand fully therefore I didn't offer my support as I should have and it was my Mother and I was also grieving.
There are simply no easy answers as what to do when a con comes knocking. And depending on your states laws you may not be able to send him packing as I wish I could have done. So the only thing you can do is protect your parent as much as possible and protect yourself. See a lawyer, find out what you can do and what you cannot legally do. Be prepared for the con to come out of the woodwork with some signed piece of paper he may have forced your parent to sign under duress. In most states this won't pass muster but it will hold up the process of probate unless your parent was foresight thinking enough to make sure everything was taken care of so all his/her assets would pass to you at the time of his/her death. Unfortunately, most people don't think that far ahead and property such as homes and vehicles are harder to handle than bank accounts, etc.

If you've just lost someone this is a very difficult time and one in which you need to take time to grieve. I keep hearing this and it's only been a week. I know grief is a process and it takes time but society doesn't slow down enough for a person to grieve. There's too much to deal with, too many things to take care of to really take the time to grieve as one should. Grief these days comes when you have time to allow it in.