Ask HN: Help, my mom is getting scammed by “Elon Musk” | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Help, my mom is getting scammed by “Elon Musk”

11 pointsScammerThrow14 comments

My mom (74) is getting scammed by “Elon Musk” and I don’t know how to stop it. The running total is $50k+ and she will be homeless soon if this continues. It all started 6 months ago. I was helping her out with an issue on her computer and noticed that she had a Coinbase bookmark on her browser. I asked her why she had it bookmarked. She then proceeded to say she had money in a crypto “brokerage” account. The site[1] she pulled up showed that she had assets totaling $70k+ and she had made 30% profit. As a software developer I was even surprised that the website was somewhat sophisticated. Of course, this was all a scam and I was eventually able to bring the site down by reporting it to the abuse email of Namecheap.

Soon after, I looked through her phone and found that they had been communicating quite a bit[3][4][5][6]. He built a relationship with her and she was/is in love with him. I decided to tell my family about her deeds and we had an intervention with her. Long story short, we thought this was the end of her dealings with “Elon.”

Turns out, it wasn’t over. I saw my mom over Thanksgiving and noticed that she was using her phone a lot. When she went to the bathroom I was able to get into her phone and noticed that she was still talking to “Elon” on Telegram. The website had also changed to https://megatradepro.com/ archived here at https://archive.vn/uHa8s and included image[2] and her invite through tidio.com[7]. She had promised him another $5k. At this point, I’ve tried everything to get through to her to no avail. Has anyone been through this before and can provide some guidance?

Tldr; My mom has been sending “Elon Musk” bitcoin, through crypto.com and coinbase, to fund his Mars missions. She is depleting her life savings quickly.

1.) https://asglobalassets.com 2.) https://i.imgur.com/jd7iTOi.png 3.) https://i.imgur.com/dvup0qb.jpg 4.) https://i.imgur.com/cGnEjbj.jpg 5.) https://i.imgur.com/HVsi2TT.jpg 6.) https://i.imgur.com/4CNBkv4.jpg 7.) https://i.imgur.com/jTlptQL.png

Talk to an attorney, maybe even her attorney, and see if you can seek guardianship of her, either temporarily or perhaps permanently. I had to do this with my grandmother who developed dementia because her son (my uncle) lived with her and was trying to talk her into signing her house over to him. She had been exhibited other signs of dementia, like paying bills twice, writing down lists of people and phone numbers, forgetting I had been there for lunch earlier, etc.

For me, it was a very straightforward process. We met with her lawyer, he asked her some questions, she gave some incorrect answers (like "How is your daughter doing?" My grandmother said fine, even though my mom was on a walker with RA; she called me by my uncle's name in the meeting.) The lawyer agreed she was not able to fully take care of herself, I met him in court in front of a judge, the judge asked me a few questions about accepting responsibility for my grandma, and a temporary guardianship was granted. That was automatically changed to permanent after 60 days. My grandma didn't have to go to court, I guess because of the lawyer's statement that he agreed she was incompetent.

It's a big responsibility to "takeover" a person like this, but it's also sometimes necessary to protect them. IANAL, but my understanding is a Power of Attorney grants you privileges of the other person, but they still have them too. Whereas guardianship gives you the rights and removes them from the person. Guardianship doesn't have to be permanent, though maybe in this case, that's warranted.

One important note: make sure your mother's will is the way she wants it before you do the guardianship, because once that is done, the will cannot be changed. My grandma's attorney never took this step with me, he had drawn up her will, and it contained errors that could not be fixed after the guardianship was granted. We were lucky that things worked out okay, but if my mom had died before my uncle, all of my grandma's assets would have gone to him, with none going to my mom's side of the family, and we were the ones taking care of her! "Per stirpes" was omitted in the will. Two words -- huge difference in meaning.

When someone's been scammed, it's very hard for them to admit they have, because it makes you feel like a rube. You want to create a safe environment where they feel like they still have support and aren't ridiculed for making their mistakes, with the focus being on solutions.

You may need to present evidence and give her ways to tell that this is in fact not Elon, because she currently does not have the tools to recognize a situation where she is being scammed. Methods might include explaining that the situation of "a media famous billionaire is personally interacting with her" is too good to be true, especially without extremely good evidence that it's true which she has not received, that intuitively, someone with a net worth of 181 billion dollars would not be asking her for 5k, and that the site she was using just got closed down for scamming its customers out of their money.

Use any rhetorical tools in your argument toolbox to give her the intuition that she's been had, how she was had, and explain that these kind of scams happen thousands of times a day and explicitly target the elderly, so she's not to blame for what happened.

Once you're on the same page, help cut the scammer out. Block their email, block their social media, block their phone number, virus scan her computer and add an ongoing scanner on her machine, update her phone, install an ad-blocker on her browser, and if you have the savvy to do it, go into her router and block that scam site at the DNS level so she can't get back.

Thank you so much for this comment. This helps a lot.

Accept that nothing you do will work short of legally assuming 100% control of her finances.

I had a grandmother do exactly the same thing in the 1980s and 1990s via phone scams. She died penniless, having dithered away $X00,000s in cash and retirement assets.

This behavior was extremely compulsive on her part and quite outside her ability to examine rationally or control - think gambling addiction rather than "stupid decisions."

I think it is extrememly unlikely that any intervention by you and your family will help. Your mom is not able to stop and will not stop.

Your mom is looking for (fake or not) emotional support/intimacy and does not seem to be getting it though (sorry to say) her family.

I don't know, maybe talk to her more, therapist, something?

You need to seek advice from medical professionals and attorneys, not HN.

I agree, but I'll rewrite the question of the OP:

fake quote> Who the fuck should I contact? A medical professional? An attorney? The police? The FBI?

Luckily I never had to deal with something like this, so I have no idea. Is there some non-profit organization that can give advice? (Something like AA.)

Some state governments have an elder abuse organization.

Counties typically have a Senior Services department, and that usually serves as a good first point of contact.

Both.

Medical (i.e., Mom's doctor) to discuss her mental state.

Attorney - likely in concert with doctor - to possibly see about obtaining power of attorney for degraded mental state.

I think this is going to have to be the way, unfortunately. Thanks for the recommendation.

Bring it up with a three letter organization? Bring it up with Coinbase? https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/privacy-and-security/a...

Might be worthwhile calling the police

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