Scamwarners is a website set up as a sister site to 419eater, more a help and advice website. I've used material from Scamwarners extensively over the last few years in showing Senior net members how scams work, what to watch for.
At the Senior Net meeting today, one of the ladies told me she had just found out her husband (83) has been involved in a Spanish Lottery scam for the past few months. She's managed to get the bank accounts, property title, and farm ownership signed over to her, plus all the bank accounts, but not before he has sent between $180,000 and $250,000 to the scammers. He has cashed in his life assurance policies, tried to obtain a mortgage on their farm, used the overdraft facility to max it out.
Sad all around, he had a stroke a few years ago, has recovered, but there is something missing ever since then. He is a soft touch, every telephone marketeer that calls gets him to agree to $30 a month, $50 a month payments for orphanages/red cross/whatever. At one point, he had agreed to over $2,000 of payments each month to various charities and organisations.
He really needs to be watched 24/7, their family are aware, and the bank is aware also, and have cancelled all his access to any account. The money is gone, luckily it wasn't everything, and while it has made a hole in their life, they have enough in the farm to recover.
We had our first real frost this week, the snow has gone, so it is just the valley floor that had the frosting.
Tuffy has a girlfriend. I dropped him off this morning about 7.45 on my way to Takaka. She is a Lab x staffie, white and black spots. She's on heat, and her owner wanted to breed her this year. From what Dan said, they got on really really well. I picked Tuffy up about 2pm, he slept all the way home, had something to eat when we got home, crawled up on his couch and went to sleep again.
He woke about 5, took him out for a walk, he's back asleep again, but he's eaten 4 bowls of food so far since this afternoon. Normally that is about 2 - 3 days worth of food.
He's going back for another day on Thursday :)
Slowly getting the house sorted out and tidy, 10 months of 12 on 2 off roster with 4am starts, and all I do is clear a path between where I'm going, then I sleep the rest of the time. Finding jars of jam/preserves that I've done this year, and forgotten about stored in the pantry, cupboards.
I've got nearly all the slides filed, a few more boxes to go then I'll be able to write a index or description for each page of pictures. Some go back to the late 60's, 70's when I was wandeing around Northland, weddings, funerals, trips.
A few pics of Takaka
No comments:
Post a Comment