Snapshots of Dementia: Scam Alert, Part 1

Posted by Marti on January 28, 2023 in Dementia | 4 comments

“Turn it off,” I said, my voice shaking. “I just can’t watch that.” 

The YouTube video that caused me to speak to my daughter in such a direct way had a topic too familiar to all of us: dementia. As I recall, it involved two men who exposed scams, this one targeting senior adults who were living with dementia. The investigators were doing a great job of ferreting out those responsible and (I presume) helping bring them to justice. 

That wasn’t the problem, of course. The problem, for me, was the deliberate way they pointed their attacks toward someone LWD, easily confusing and misleading them.  

And the real problem—the reason I couldn’t watch anymore—was that this happened to our family too.  

More than two years before Tom’s official diagnosis with dementia, while the neurologist was still telling me he was fine, we experienced one of the worst seasons of our lives. We were already going through marriage counseling after he confessed some very inappropriate activity (not a physical affair). What should have been one of our happiest times, with one of our daughters getting married that summer, quickly become just the opposite. 

Tom was barely doing the required homework for our marriage counseling. In fact, he often seemed disinterested when we met (via Zoom, although the pandemic was a few years away) with our counselors from Pure Desire Ministries.  

The loneliness I often experience now while married to someone LWD is nowhere near as great as what I felt then. I cried nearly every day, sometimes sobbing for much of my forty-minute drive to and from work. Why did my husband no longer seem to care about our marriage?  

Over that summer and fall, at the same time as we were going through counseling, complete with accountability partners to whom Tom reported every week, he was giving away our money, several thousand dollars at a time. The first time, while out of town, he had money wired from our bank to share with a scammer. Later, he used credit to buy gift cards, also shared with a scammer. 

And here’s one of the worst parts: because he was the primary money manager, I had no idea any of this was happening.  

I had noticed his increasing struggles, and (at my insistence) Tom had a neurological workup including an MRI, but I wasn’t yet in relentless pursuit of a diagnosis. In fact, it took almost a year after that for me to connect the problems in his behavior and in our marriage to his dementia.  

Like many people, I thought of dementia as primarily a memory issue. Tom had some memory problems, but he also had many other behavioral symptoms that he still exhibits today. Even way back then, while he was still holding down his full-time job as a worship pastor, he showed symptoms such as apathy, obsessive behaviors, hiding and hoarding items, and an increasing lack of logic and planning ability. 

It seems so obvious now, when I can look at a list of behavioral dementia symptoms and recognize how well his fit the pattern. But back then, some of his actions upset me so much that I don’t know if I could have put it all together even if I’d known more. 

The financial concerns came to a head over several successive weeks when I found a rejected credit card application (we have always paid our bills every month and did not need another card, plus he applied for it in secret); a text to a “woman” (the scammers could have been anyone) that he tried to hide from me; and finally, a $10,000 check from our children’s college trust money that Tom had made out to himself, mercifully leaving it in plain sight. 

Finding that uncashed but very wrong check was the first in a series of wake-up calls God gave me that ultimately helped push me toward seeking a diagnosis. Before, I felt sad. Now, I was crushed. Without a word to Tom, I opened my own checking and savings accounts, moving most of our money from the joint accounts to the new ones. I switched the automatic deposit of my paycheck to my account, and whenever his came in, I would move most of it to my account as well. 

I went from not paying much attention to what we had in the bank to taking charge of nearly all of it. And, because of what I now know was his dementia, Tom never even noticed.  

I’ll tell the rest of this story in next week’s blog post, but for now, please know that scammers are out there. They are watching. And they are looking for the most vulnerable—which, very often, is the person LWD. 

If you suspect someone you care about is living with dementia, have you noticed a personality change or behavioral shift? Not everything Tom experienced happens with every type of dementia—in fact, even people who have the same type can show very different symptoms. Please be aware of the dangers of scammers, who prey on the vulnerable. Consider carefully whether you need to take charge of finances sooner rather than later. And don’t feel you must—as I did for too long—bear your burdens alone.