A Tale of Two Scams

How Two Family Members Fell Prey to Swindlers & Narcissists, One Tragically

I like to think of myself as a sensible, logical person. Most of you who’ve read my heavily evidence–linked, analytical research and writing would agree.

I can usually spot a scam within seconds—especially if one of my loved ones is being targeted. That didn’t stop me from getting fleeced myself, though, when I let my heart override my head, or rather, my intuition.

Before I share that story, though, I want to tell you what happened to two dear relatives who fell for scams. Maybe it will help you spot and avoid them yourself.

During one of my last phone calls with my grandma before she died in 2007, she was telling me about a new entrepreneurial venture she’d invested a few thousand dollars in—money she did not have and likely used a credit card for. They promised to build a website with products like apparel, and she would supposedly earn her money back quickly. She didn’t have Internet access or email and relied on an approximately eighteen-year-old PC, which she used to write children’s stories and letters, so she was naïve about these things.

What’s in a Name?

I immediately sensed it was a scam and told her so. She said she had consulted her tax lady, who looked it up at the Better Busines Bureau and thought they were legit. I asked my grandma not to send them any more money. She agreed, anxiously beginning to realize she may have been conned. When I looked them up, I found records documenting the business as a known perpetrator of fraud.

From birth to death, my grandma always lived on the cusp of poverty. After her father died tragically young, heartbreakingly awfully from cancer just before she turned eight, her mother raised her and her four siblings by working every waking moment, doing laundry, ironing, and other odd jobs for neighbors so she could be at home while raising her kids.

My great-grandmother didn’t mind all the work. She was an acutely focused, passionate woman who’d dedicated years to achieving her dream of becoming a nurse. When my great-grandfather fell in love with her (a humorous and poignant story I’ll tell someday), she asked him to wait five years before getting married so she could finish her three remaining years of nurses’ training and work for another two. He waited faithfully, and they enjoyed a blissful marriage until she was widowed at forty-eight—a year younger than me when I was widowed.

In a piece titled, “My Mother,” my grandma wrote on October 1, 1991 (using WordPerfect on the PC I mentioned above):

“Nurses’ training was hard and the work was never-ending, but for [my mother], it was a lifelong dream come true. To her, work was the true fun in life, and she had always had difficulty playing and relaxing. She never could just sit for very long. She had to be doing something useful; life was too short to be wasting time in idleness.¹”

My grandma became a single mom herself in the fifties, divorcing her itinerant, philandering husband and raising three children while working full-time for a narcissist who paid her below minimum wage. My mom remembers always feeling hungry, and when they did eat, it was cheap food with empty calories like spaghetti. She thinks this lack of nutrition during her growing years contributed to her later health problems.

A few years later, my grandma got a better job. She made enough to buy decent groceries, but paying bills remained a struggle.

Perhaps this was why she repeatedly fell prey to get-rich-quick schemes. She had a habit of trusting strangers, of thinking they had her best interests in mind, and she believed them when they told her this or that gadget, this or that scheme was going to be the key to helping her break out of the lower middle-class bracket.

None of them did, of course.

I remember when I was in high school, she once got a gumball machine and placed it in a local store. I doubt it made more than a few dollars.

But I couldn’t blame my grandma. It was her hope-springs-eternal optimism and faith in people that made her vulnerable to such trickery. Ever-resilient, with each disappointment, she picked herself up and opened her heart to the next opportunity.

And that partly explains how a distant relative I’ll call Katie also fell for a scam, this one far grander, far costlier, far more vicious than anything my grandma ever suffered.