08/01/2017
Why I Became a Daily Money Manager (Part 2)
by Joseph Hunt, President
JSE Hunt and Associates, Inc.
I never knew what my father-in-law was going to ask me next. He was a smart man with an endless curiosity and would call me with seemingly random questions at seemingly random intervals. He kept me on my toes.
When he called me one day and asked me how “Windows Services” knew there was a problem with his computer, my own curiosity was piqued. What I found was that my father-in-law – again, a very intelligent man – had gotten himself entangled with a vicious overseas computer scam. He had already sent these criminals a big wire transfer and they were now billing him $29.95 a month to monitor his computer for ‘security issues”. And worse than the money, he had at times given them remote access to his computer which contained personal, financial and security data.
Now they were reporting another serious “security issue” and demanding another big wire transfer to fix it. That’s when he called me. With great respect and kindness, but with firmness, I had to tell him that he was being robbed; that these guys were criminals and they were stealing his money.
Of course, he was embarrassed and ashamed, but I explained to him that this was a common trap, and that these criminals were experts at scamming senior citizens. And then I told him that we had ways of fighting them. I asked him if I could help.
I would take care of all his daily finances. I would computerize everything and we could track where every penny of his money was going. I changed all his bills and statements to paperless mode and began using electronic payment methods so he didn’t have to write checks. (I first obtained the legal authority to do all of this on his behalf.)
We shut down the monthly payments to the scammers. We took additional security steps necessary to make sure they couldn’t harm him any further, including filing a police report. Sadly, the ever-persistent scammers weren’t done with him just yet. They called him a few months later and said that since he was no longer paying their monthly fee, they needed to remove their monitoring software.
Again, he gave them remote access to his computer and they hijacked it. Everything was encrypted and frozen, and they demanded a fee to release it back to him. Instead, we had that computer wiped clean and refreshed. He lost all his programs, pictures and emails.
But in reviewing his finances we found something even scarier than the scammers. As we went through his accounts online, we discovered that the beneficiaries for all of his pension benefits were incorrect. Through either a scam or just a simple clerical error, neither his wife nor his daughters were listed as beneficiaries. A woman in California was listed as his primary beneficiary and her son was listed as secondary beneficiary. We had no idea who they were.
If he had passed away prior to us discovering this error his wife would have been left with no pension and no health insurance. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. It took us three weeks to get that straightened out during which time I begged him not to die.
Eventually we got everything worked out. The scammers finally left him alone and his financial house was in order. Better yet, we were protected and secured. His lifetime of working and saving was now doing what he wanted it to do – providing for and protecting his family while he was here and after he left us.
That is the basis today of my Daily Money Management service. Simplify. Protect. Unburden.
