I Never Thought My Dad Would Become a Romance Scam Victim. Don’t Make My Mistake

“One of us has to go to North Carolina,” Joe told me. “Like, as soon as possible.”

I sighed, my anger and anxiety rising. We were in the thick of the pandemic, and COVID vaccines weren’t yet available to the public, so it seemed wildly unsafe to travel to a 78-year-old man’s home, particularly around the holidays. But we urgently needed to know how much debt Dad was dealing with.

So, just after Christmas, I climbed into my car for the 10-hour drive to Dad’s home in Hendersonville. I stopped only for gas and brought masks to wear inside the sprawling ranch home that my parents had designed for their retirement 20 years earlier.

Assessing the damage

What I found in Dad’s stack of unopened mail was worse than I’d imagined.

Bobbie had been living in California and, briefly, New York City with her grown daughter on my dad’s dime for several years.

He’d taken out a reverse mortgage on his previously paid-off home to buy these women a mobile home in California and pay their rent on the lot. (The women eventually sold the mobile home. Did Dad get any of the money back? Probably very little, if any.) There was now almost zero equity left in Dad’s house.

He also had taken out loans at several banks and hadn’t made any payments, so the interest had ballooned.

That’s not all: He had maxed out the balances on several credit cards (some of which the women had used), was in danger of having his utilities and phone service cut off, and received daily calls from collectors, whom he ignored.

All told, Dad was in the hole for nearly half a million dollars.

I have struggled emotionally to reconcile the penny-pinching, highly educated, rational man who raised me with this compassion-filled patron of women he hardly knew. (“I just felt so sorry for them,” he kept saying, claiming his “girlfriend” couldn’t work due to her rheumatoid arthritis.)

In the moment, of course, I couldn’t pause to process Dad’s contradictions. There was way too much to do to get him out of the giant hole he was in.

Recovering from the scam

Helping my dad became a full-time job that cost us no small amount of money.

Our work included hiring a lawyer and helping Dad file for bankruptcy, adding my name to each of his bank accounts, moving him to a small apartment near my home in Michigan (and finding a new fleet of doctors for him there), and preparing his property and house for sale (a task made harder by the fact that the reverse mortgage company declared it “abandoned” and put locks on the doors).

We also policed his contact with Bobbie, whom he still reached out to now and then despite our efforts to block her calls, texts and emails. (Meanwhile, she made him feel guilty for stopping payments and listed him on yet another apartment lease, with his permission, after he’d submitted bankruptcy documents. We had to fight to get his name removed.)

I realized that Dad was addicted to the relationship.

When a loved one won’t cut ties with a scammer

Reluctance to accept one’s situation is common among romance scam victims, says Regina Koepp, a clinical geropsychologist and founder of the Center for Mental Health and Aging. “For many older adults, especially those living with grief, isolation, or transitions like retirement or widowhood, the scam relationship may become a vital emotional lifeline,” she explains. “So it’s not just about cutting off a scam. It’s about grieving a relationship that felt real, while simultaneously processing betrayal, shame and loss of trust in oneself. It’s incredibly destabilizing.”

On several occasions, I looked my dad in the eye and said, “I know this is hard for you to hear, but when the chips are down, you find out who really cares about you. We’re here, helping you through all this. She’s not.”

He would nod and say he understood, but it never felt like my messages landed.

I was absolutely exhausted.

As Koepp explains, “When you’re supporting a parent through the fallout of a romance scam, you’re not just managing logistics like debt or bankruptcy. You’re also tending to your own heartbreak — navigating grief, anger … and often resentment.”

One of my biggest challenges during the recovery process was making space for all I needed to do to help my dad while also staying as engaged and present as possible with my husband and kids. I found some strategies that helped me get through the experience. They might help you, too, if you find yourself in similar circumstances.

Strategies for anyone helping a family member recover after a scam

1. Consider therapy or a support group. I’d never previously tried therapy, but when the news of my father’s “relationship” surfaced, I knew I needed to work through some complicated feelings and explore how far I was willing to go to save my father. I found clarity navigating such questions with an uninvolved third party — a neutral sounding board with no agenda or judgment.

Other resources include the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360, where trained volunteers will guide you on next steps if you’ve been targeted in a scam. And the AARP Fraud Victim Support Group offers free online facilitated discussions for victims and their families.

2. Seek support from family and friends. Throughout that trying year, I had dinner almost every night with Joe and my daughters (then 12 and 9), who faced their own struggles during the pandemic. We played board games, had karaoke nights and watched silly movies. No matter what chaos I faced assisting my dad, they kept me feeling loved, grounded and capable of small joys.

It’s also essential to find help with sifting through your loved one’s finances, keeping an eye on their mental health and handling other logistics in the aftermath of a scam. If siblings or other relatives are willing to pitch in, say yes. Consider everyone in your personal or professional network who can provide assistance, answers and guidance.

3. Report the crime. In our situation, we weren’t sure that it would be worth involving the police, so we focused our energies on helping my dad more directly. But many victim advocates, including Amy Nofgizer, head of fraud victim support for the AARP Fraud Watch Network, note that scams are crimes and suggest reporting them to both local law enforcement and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Nofziger says you could also reach out to your area’s district attorney general's office. Even if officials don’t end up arresting the perpetrator, scam reports help them identify where to direct their resources and warn the public about emerging threats.

4. Don’t expect gratitude, and be patient. Although my dad’s situation was exasperating, it would have been considerably worse had he fought us. He didn’t. He knew he’d reached rock bottom. But he was also embarrassed by his predicament — something I tried to remember when I’d grow annoyed that he didn’t regularly acknowledge how we’d turned our lives upside down to help him.

In the end, my father lived only another seven months after we moved him up to Michigan. I’ll never know if his death was hastened by the stress he’d been through.

I often tell myself I did everything I could, but it still feels like I failed him. I should never have assumed that this couldn’t happen in our family — that my coupon-clipping engineer father would never become a romance scam victim. But he did. Although he had said he wanted to live alone after my mother died, I think the solitude made him desperate for connection and purpose.

He found those things, but the financial and emotional cost was shocking — not just for him, but also for those of us who loved him.