Don't Let Them Scam Your Parents

Your mother mentions, in passing, that a man from the bank called about suspicious activity. Something in the way she says it makes your stomach drop.

This is a calm, practical guide for the person on the other end of that phone call: the adult child who is worried and does not know where to start.

It begins by throwing out the assumption the whole subject is built on. Your parents are not gullible, and this is not happening because they are getting older. They lose more money per incident for a duller reason: they have more to lose. The people calling are professionals reading scripts tested on thousands of people. Anyone can be caught on a bad day.

That matters, because if you approach this as though they have failed, they will stop telling you when something happens, and that is the one thing that actually protects them.

What is inside

• The conversation: how to raise it without insulting them, with the exact words that work and the ones that end the discussion
• The call that says a grandchild is in trouble: how it really sounds, and why voice cloning has made the old advice useless
• Voices claiming authority: fake Social Security, fake bank fraud departments, fake tech support
• Romance and companionship scams: the cruellest ones, and why direct confrontation makes them worse
• Investment, crypto, Medicare and doorstep scams
• Two step-by-step walkthroughs: a one-hour phone lockdown, and an hour spent locking down the money
• The safety net: a family code word, the pause rule, and a one-page card for the refrigerator
• If it already happened: the first 24 hours in order, written to be read in a panic

The details

• 14 chapters, around 13,900 words, 71 pages
• A checklist at the end of every chapter
• PDF and EPUB, both included: the EPUB reflows to your font size and works with read-aloud, so it can be listened to rather than read
• Written for the United States, with a note for readers elsewhere
• Instant download. No account needed to buy. Nothing ships

Every chapter is written so it could be left open on a kitchen table without causing offence. If your parent picks it up, they will find a book that treats them as an intelligent adult being targeted by professionals, because that is exactly what is happening.