The Scam

This morning I was lying in bed awake feeling like I have more to share. It's like I have a case of a verbal stomach flu and I won't feel better until I have gotten it all out. So much has been hidden for so long. I feel a little like this is flipping my dad off when he's no longer around to be angry at me. He hated people knowing his business and here I am sharing in a very public forum. But all of these memories and emotions are clawing at me and needing to be let out. I read back over what I've written and I go back and forth in my brain: "That wasn't so bad. There are kids out there that have it way worse than I did. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?" To, "Gosh, what was I thinking letting him have any part of my life as an adult? I should have just cut him out and not let him continue to hurt me." Where does forgiveness, mercy, and love meet the line of keeping myself and my family safe? I clearly don't know.

I don't even know what I want to share here. I figure there is an explanation of the last year or so of his life with his health, and another with the romance scam. The two were interconnected but telling all of it all at once is makes for a convoluted story. Maybe I will start with his relationships.

My dad, for all of his unhealthy and solitary ways, didn't want to be alone. He wanted someone to take care of him, and in his way, someone to take care of. He was married once before mom. He was married to my mom for 26 years. They were sealed to each other when I was 3 months old. They tried to cram me into my white blessing dress for the sealing but it couldn't be zipped up over my baby chub. He married another lady after my mom who was a whopping 12 years older than me, and she had a couple of kids at home. They were sealed in the temple and that lasted a few years. I think I met her once. They moved to Wyoming after a couple of months living in my dad's one room basement apartment in Renton. According to my mom, this one reached out to my mom when they broke up and asked how my mom had put up with him for so long. Then the last wife lasted maybe two years? This one I think I saw twice. He said she scratched the glass stovetop in his kitchen leaving an awful long mark. He was also engaged once in between my mom and wife #3. Ryan and I took his honeymoon trip to Portland after it fell through. The bed and breakfast was non-refundable.

After all of that, you would think my dad might have felt it best not to pursue another romantic relationship. But hope springs eternal.

In August 2023 my family took a trip up to see my dad in Spokane and go to Silverwood. There was a reward good behavior (mine- visiting my dad then we could go have fun). My dad pulled Ryan and me aside to say that he had met someone very special online. She reached out to him on Twitter. She was so good and sweet and conservative, with "old world values" (meaning men give permission blah blah blah). She says she was from Greece I think, so her English wasn't great and she was self conscious about it so they really only texted. She would "ask his permission" and let him know she was going out with friends or some such nonsense. She was also a financial genius and was helping him make investments. Then he showed us a picture of Giorgia. She was everything young, hot, and sexy. Her age was unclear, but she was heavily made up, wearing sunglasses, shorts, and a midriff bearing furry sweatshirt thing. She was blonde and tan and skinny and we all could see it. I rolled my eyes at this. My dad was an average looking man in his mid 60s. There was no way this was real. But my dad insisted she would be coming to visit him the end of September or early October and could he bring her by to meet us? He had a great feeling about this one. She was his true soul mate and it was sad it had taken him this long to find her.

Whatever. It was his life.

In September 2023 my dad abruptly sold his condo in Spokane. He sold it to a realtor because he wanted the money that fast. Ryan and I dropped everything one weekend because he asked and helped him move his stuff into a storage unit. Giorgia was coming soon and they were going to travel the world. Her investment accumen in online crypto-currency had helped all of his money grow to huge amounts and now dad could afford to retire and enjoy life. He was going to live in a hotel until Giorgia came and then they would be off to maybe Florida. Somewhere warm and nice. 

October 2023 Giorgia had put off coming again. He found a bedroom in someone's basement to live in. Dad was also in need of financial help. His investments needed money up front to pay the taxes and then he could have access to his investment money. He called Ryan and asked for $300,000, telling us to take a 2nd mortgage out on our house. He had signed a "Smart Contract" so everything was on the up and up, I guess due to its great sounding name? Our money would be safe, but he needed it to access his money again. He had sunk everything into it. Money from the sale of his condo, savings, other investments, everything he'd had. He could not understand how we could just turn our backs on family in need. That's not what the Savior would do. He taught me better than that.

Sorry, no.

The amount he needed went down. $200,000. $150,000. $60,000. $30,000. Anything. How could we be so unfeeling? So uncaring? So unChristlike?

We were firm in our refusal. But oh, the anguish that came with that guilt trip. I am ever the sucker for it.

November came and Giorgia still hadn't come. Dad's health took a sharp downhill turn, and he ended up in the hospital, losing much of his vision and hearing. But more on that later.

He was frantic and upset about his money, and I think the stress of all of it took its toll on dad's health. We went and visited dad in a rehabilitation hospital. They must have taken that as my affirmation that I would take care of him, because they called and tried to set up his discharge to live with me. 

Cue the panic.

Dad needed more care due to worse health, so back to the regular hospital he went. Through it all, he was firm that Giorgia was only acting in his best interests. But strangely, through all of his health struggles, she never showed up. 

I had a list of people to email and call. Set up emergency health insurance with his work, the kind when you can no longer work but they cover you for a year anyway. Figure out what was next with HR. Follow up with the lawyer about banking issues. Fill out paperwork for Medicaid and Medicare and Disability. Take care of all of these problems that kept popping up. Move him out of his bedroom apartment. Make multiple trips to Spokane over December, January, and February to visit him.

We explained multiple times to different people associated with the hospital and all of his paperwork that he was being scammed. As we explained what was happening, there was not a single person who thought any of his "investments" sounded legit. They all had those pitying looks on their faces.

At the end of February 2024 we came to the climax. No one was lending him money. He wanted his car back. We had driven it to our house because A- he couldn't see well enough to drive anymore and B- he didn't have any place besides the hospital to live. There just wasn't a good place to store the car in Spokane. But he was going to sell his car, and get a couple of people he knew through his Karate group to go through his safe in his storage unit and get out the last of his gold and silver coins. He was going to scrape just as much money as he could together. We told the hospital staff what was going on, and they socially quarantined him. The staff found him trying to sell his coins and stuff in his hospital room. So they moved him and gave a safe word. No one could go see him without it, basically without my permission. My dad had assigned me as his medical and financial power of attorney and I was doing my best to keep him safe. He was not happy with me. He wanted those papers back.

The last straw was the phone call that he asked me to PERSONALLY deliver the last of his gathered money to Giorgia at a bank in Spokane. She was going to Spokane but not seeing him? Was anyone else confused and suspicious? My brain immediately imagined all of the various ways that could go badly. Would I be mugged, beaten and left for dead? Why did she ask for me personally and to go alone? Dad hadn't even met her in person. Surely this sounds off. I refused and told him why. It was a scam and I would not be a part of it. Everyone knew it but him. It's a romance scam and bears all the hallmarks of one. He had lost all of his money and I would not help him lose the last of his money. He has major bills to pay- months of living in a hospital. He launched into his tired tirade saying how much better he understood these things. He was going to leave the hospital, and all of my hours of work would be for nothing. I had people at the hospital helping with getting him a facility to live in that would be able to take care of his needs. So much stupid paperwork had gone into proving his financial losses and medical needs. Once he checked himself out of the hospital, it was over and they could no longer help. He was under a case worker's care as long as he was in the hospital and he clearly wasn't competent to take care of himself. But oh ho, he always knows better than everyone else. I laid into him about all of the ways he hurt me as a child and an adult and he didn't know what he was talking about. That's when the swearing started. He didn't usually swear at me, but I had him pretty worked up I guess. I was shaking pretty hard and decided it was time to be done. I hate conflict. And conflict with him is so hard for me. I told him I loved him but I was done helping him. And I hung up.

We had alerted Adult Protective Services a couple of times about my dad. We filed a police report about the scam. Ryan even called the FBI once we learned that this lady was supposed to be at a Spokane bank on a particular day. It is surprisingly difficult to alert the FBI about scams. I guess there are too many to deal with them all. All of these government agencies, and no real help.

I got my father-in-law to meet me in Spokane. I drove my dad's car to the hospital. I had strict instructions to park his car where it wouldn't get scraped or bumped in the parking garage. I was not in a compliant frame of mind and parked his little Yaris next to a Hummer. I gave my father-in-law the car keys and the estate binder with my power of attorney and he gave it to my dad, and then he drove me home.

What happened to my dad after that is fuzzy. I know from a friend of my dad's that he got ex-wife #4 to take him away from the hospital and I think he lived with another friend until possibly his sister and her husband picked him up in November and took him to Texas. I don't really know. The friend my dad was living with is a condescending jerk (they get along so well) and I really don't need to know badly enough to ask.

Anyway, this was a photo of Giorgia we found on my dad's phone. Yes we snooped right in front of him and took advantage of his blindness. This is exactly the sort of photo a "sweet, conservative" women takes, right? Ryan did the snooping. He said it was best that I did not subject my eyeballs and brain to the texts they were exchanging.

Ryan sent the imagine to his uncle. His uncle and several computer science students at San Jose State University thought they were able to track this image to a creepy looking 30-ish foreign dude with a goatee. That's likely who he was talking to romantically all this time.