We have had to deal with numerous instances of Mil, prior to her moving in with us, agreeing to pay for all manner of things - from solar panels (£4,500) to a pricey internet package (when she has never had, nor would know how to use, a computer or anything similar). We voiced concerns so many times to her SW - but as Mil refused POA (she is still, to a certain extent, in denial) all we could do was be really vigilant. Sometimes home carers would 'tip us off' . Sometimes we would find letters that told us what was happening, other times the first we knew was we would get a phone call from her saying she had a bill for something that she had no recollection of buying, or that items she was adamant she had never ordered had been delivered. Even though we knew that she was binning a lot of mail, we thought we had managed to deal with most of these 'purchases' -but as we had no access to any of her bank statements, we couldn't be sure. She had also agreed at some point, that her details could be shared with 3rd parties - so TPS no use - and the sign we got saying 'No cold callers', she frequently removed.
Now she has moved in with us, and she has finally agreed to POA (which we are sorting) and she has agreed to us 'helping' to sort out her accounts, we have found out that we were unaware of a lot of things happening She was paying 3 different companies to insure her sky box. She was paying a monthly direct debit to access a website that would give her 'information and advice about the contents of her medicine cabinet' (not that she had the internet, much less a way of accessing it!). She had changed utility providers 3 times in less than 2 months, ending up with a pretty pricey package. She had - although she swears that she never agreed to any of it, or even knew it was happening - several regular payments going out to various charities, totaling over £100 per month (£60 to one well known charity alone!). A far as we can make out, all of these were done as a result of cold callers, mainly telephone.
The most sickening thing though, is finding out that over the last 2 years, she has cashed in 2 or 3 savings policies, that we didn't even know existed, to the tune of several thousand - and she has no idea what she has done with the money - actually, she has no recollection of having had the savings in the first place. We can't find any record of any purchases, or any indication of where this money has gone - and are pretty sure that aside from cold callers where she at least got something in return for her money (no matter how useless or inappropriate) its highly likely that she has been scammed out of a large amount of cash
I just wish we had realized that this problem was so much worse than we knew at the time, we both feel sick that we didn't do enough to protect her from this situation - though we don't really know what we could have done to protect her completely
