The phone is the easiest way into an older person's money, and the scam does not need a break-in. These calls share a shape: urgency, secrecy, a request for a payment method that cannot be reversed, and a demand that Dad act before anyone else hears about it. Name the shape early and it is a phone problem. Leave it alone and it becomes an account problem.
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The shapes to recognise
Watch for a caller who says a family member is in trouble and needs money right away. Watch for a caller claiming to be from a government agency, a bank, a prize office, or a computer company with a warning that needs fixing. Watch for any request to buy gift cards, send cash by courier, or wire money. Watch for a request for a password, a one-time code, or access to the computer. Each of these is a stop sign, whoever the caller says they are.
The rule that catches most of them
A real bank, agency, or relative will accept a callback on a number you already know. A scam will not. If the caller forbids a hang-up, insists on secrecy, or rushes the decision, hang up and call back on the number printed on the card or statement, or on a number already saved in the family contacts. Never use a number the caller gives you.
What to check on the phone and the account
Check the call log for unknown numbers from the last few weeks. Check the account for transfers, new cards, or new payees Dad does not remember setting up. Ask whether the phone has a setting that sends unknown numbers to voicemail, and compare how two or three phones handle that setting before you change anything. Ask the bank whether it offers an alert or a hold on transfers, and what it takes to set one up.
What to do when you find it
Stop any payment in progress, call the bank on the number printed on the card, and write down every reference number you are given. Report the call to the consumer fraud reporting line run by the state attorney general, and to the local police non-emergency line if money has already moved. The Local Help in St. Louis page is where to check for who to call locally. Keep every record in one place.
Your next move: tonight, sit with Dad and go through the last ten calls in the call log. Mark the unknown numbers, then ask him to let calls from numbers he does not know go to voicemail until you have looked at them together. Tomorrow, call the bank on the number printed on his card and ask whether any transfer or new payee has been added in the last month. Write the answer down.