Hello everyone,
I'm new to the forum, but here goes..
For nearly the past year, my mother (63) has been speaking off and on to a 54 year old man she met on a dating site, and from the beginning there have been progressively more red flags than I can count. Every time I or anyone else close to her have tried to tell her that this just doesn't seem right and that she should cease all contact with him, she either gets angry with me, defends him saying he is legit and has just had a hard time of things, or she just doesn't seem to listen at all.
This guy has also been 'stuck' in ghana for months, he spent more money than he anticipated there, his passport turns out to be 'expired' and he is left with no way of accessing his US bank account to get home, because alas, it had been frozen due to a supposed identity theft incident that he experienced before leaving for Ghana to buy gold and diamonds for a 'jewelry' business he wants to open here in FL.
You would think that someone in that kind of predicament would get something like that in order *Before* travelling to a foreign country!! I recently found out that she has been sending him money so he can 'get home to the US to be with her'. Something always happens and he never gets here. She says that he didn't ask her for any money, but that she sent it to him voluntarily.
Fast forward to the present, my mother is practically head over heels for him, he says all the right things to her, she loves him, and to her he can do no wrong.
Now however, I find out that he has sent my mother packages to send to him in Ghana for him to sell and get money to come home, since places like Bestbuy won't ship to Ghana. Are you kidding me?!?!
I don't know what to do, I am so worried about her and this is killing me. This just reeks of a Scam, and yet she sees nothing wrong here!! Is there anything I do to intervene? Can the packages be sent back to the retailers they came from without risking some kind of recourse? Why won't she realize that she could be dealing with some kind of illegal reshipping scam?
Has anyone else had this happen to a loved one? I read all kinds of stories about this, but they are usually from the perspective of the victim of these scams rather than the families of the victims. Sorry for rambling, but my mind is just racing over this.
I'm new to the forum, but here goes..
For nearly the past year, my mother (63) has been speaking off and on to a 54 year old man she met on a dating site, and from the beginning there have been progressively more red flags than I can count. Every time I or anyone else close to her have tried to tell her that this just doesn't seem right and that she should cease all contact with him, she either gets angry with me, defends him saying he is legit and has just had a hard time of things, or she just doesn't seem to listen at all.
This guy has also been 'stuck' in ghana for months, he spent more money than he anticipated there, his passport turns out to be 'expired' and he is left with no way of accessing his US bank account to get home, because alas, it had been frozen due to a supposed identity theft incident that he experienced before leaving for Ghana to buy gold and diamonds for a 'jewelry' business he wants to open here in FL.
You would think that someone in that kind of predicament would get something like that in order *Before* travelling to a foreign country!! I recently found out that she has been sending him money so he can 'get home to the US to be with her'. Something always happens and he never gets here. She says that he didn't ask her for any money, but that she sent it to him voluntarily.
Fast forward to the present, my mother is practically head over heels for him, he says all the right things to her, she loves him, and to her he can do no wrong.
Now however, I find out that he has sent my mother packages to send to him in Ghana for him to sell and get money to come home, since places like Bestbuy won't ship to Ghana. Are you kidding me?!?!
I don't know what to do, I am so worried about her and this is killing me. This just reeks of a Scam, and yet she sees nothing wrong here!! Is there anything I do to intervene? Can the packages be sent back to the retailers they came from without risking some kind of recourse? Why won't she realize that she could be dealing with some kind of illegal reshipping scam?
Has anyone else had this happen to a loved one? I read all kinds of stories about this, but they are usually from the perspective of the victim of these scams rather than the families of the victims. Sorry for rambling, but my mind is just racing over this.
