‘You can’t tell anyone’: How fraudsters exploit the elderly and steal their money

After years of conversations with her children about online predators, about how easily grooming can occur … Ann Wason Moore never thought to warn her 83-year-old mother.

Journalist Ann Wason Moore's mother Susan Wason with the stack of gift cards she was forced to buy for a fraudster. Picture: Ann Wason Moore.

“You can’t tell anyone what we’re doing, or they’ll be in danger too.”

With those words, my mother’s fate was sealed.

Locked into a secret, manipulative pact with a scammer, she lost not just thousands of dollars last week, but also her confidence and even trust in the world.

After all the years of conversations I have had with my children about online predators, about how easily grooming can occur, I never thought to warn my 83-year-old mother.

And so this conman seized upon her moment of panic in order to exploit her confusion and commit financial abuse.

Journalist Ann Wason Moore's mother Susan Wason with the stack of gift cards she was forced to buy for a fraudster. Picture: Ann Wason Moore.

For many of our seniors, it’s not easy living in an increasingly technological world.

In fact, the Australian Federal Police just last week urged grandchildren to help seniors stay safe online as part of Cyber Awareness Month.

Until now, my mother has survived fairly well. She streams plenty of shows, has a laptop, iPad and iPhone, is a master of internet banking and even has a number of (barely used) social media accounts.

But as much as she tries to keep up with IT, it’s still overwhelming for anyone who is not a digital native.

In fact, in my mother’s own words, she “feels like an 11-year-old being forced to drive without any lessons”.

That means she’s out there alone on what we used to call the information superhighway, and picking up some dodgy hitchhikers.

While she’s previously flagged a number of likely frauds to me, this time she was startled by a pop-up window warning her laptop had been hacked.

Instead of calling me, she called the number provided for “technical help” … and met “Marty Casarona, senior technician in the fraud and hacking department of PayPal”.

Gift cards are commonly used in scams. Picture: Ann Wason Moore.

Clearly this was not the correct course of action, but when this malware jumped on to her screen unexpectedly, she was frightened.

Marty told Mum that her PayPal account had been hacked, and they would need to work together, in secret, to get her money back. If she told anyone, the hacker would attack their accounts too.

And so poor Mum stayed silent, terrified she would lose “more” money or that she would expose her children to the “hacker”.

Marty called her multiple times a day, ordering her to download software that gave him control of her computer. Using that, he tried to steal $10,000 from her bank account – which fortunately was immediately frozen by the financial institution, which suspected something fishy.

But Mum still believed that Marty was trying to help. And so she followed his directions to purchase thousands of dollars of Apple gift cards, photographing and sending them to him.

For days, she traipsed around Pacific Fair, buying what she could from Big W, Kmart, Coles, Target and more … Marty had warned her they would question her purchases and gave her a line to recite.

Finally, after a week without sleep, panicked about this fake hacker, Mum called my brother, an IT expert in New Jersey, and told him the truth. Or part of it at least, she was still in fear that her conversations were being monitored and Marty would no longer be able to “protect” her.

A pop-up window said her laptop had been hacked.

My brother quickly unravelled the story, and the three of us children have been working ever since to secure her computer, report the scam and notify her bank.

While the monetary loss is awful, it’s seeing my mother being taken advantage of that hurts the most. The thought of her trudging around the shops in fear, buying hundreds of gift cards to protect herself and her children, is heartbreaking.

It’s a call to action for all of us with ageing parents to look out for them every bit as much as we protect our children.

Because Mum is not alone.

In a National Seniors survey, 1100 of 5000 respondents said they’d been scammed.

The most likely victims were women over the age of 65, but even the most cautious consumers can fall victim to scams, which have become increasingly sophisticated.

In 2022, people aged 65 and over lost more money than other age groups to scammers – $120.7m in total, up 47 per cent from 2021. This is a problem growing exponentially, especially as our population ages.

As for Mum, the money spent on Apple gift cards is gone, already spent by “Marty”. But the blessing has been that it brought our family closer, despite half of us living on the opposite side of the world, as we seek to protect our mother.

I never thought this would happen to her, but she is fortunate that she can afford this financial loss.

How many others have lost their life savings? And how many others have no family to turn to?

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes that same village to protect our elders.

It’s time we work together.