It's an everyday tragedy. It can happy to any vulnerable member of anyone's family. For Rob Collins and Jennifer Bell, it was his father and her elderly relative. More and more scams prey on the elderly.
Collins' father called him all the time claiming he won $10 million or $15 million by entering a sweepstakes in the mail. Whenever Collins told his dad that this was a scam, that it was all fake, his father refused to believe him.
"He wouldn't believe me and he would get really angry and hang up the phone," Collins told CNN Money.
After his father spent tens of thousands of dollars in scams, Collins cracked down and took away his father's mail. Now, his father feels as though his life is empty without it.
"You took the mail away from me. And it's my life. I don't have a life now without no mail," his father told him over the phone.
Collins' dad was once a business professor, but when he became of a certain age he simply became more vulnerable.
Jennifer Bell's 87-year-old relative, whose home became covered with hoards of mail, gave away $100,000 on the reverse mortgage she took out on her home. The family lost the house in the process.
"It's horrifying to think she was able to give that away in less than five years… of all of the things she didn't want… she didn't want to be in a nursing home," said Bell. "Because she gave all of her money away, her worst nightmare happened."
But there's good news: PacNet, the fraudulent company responsible, is being charged with global mail fraud by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
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