The heartbreak of watching a parent fall for fraud: ‘Dad, this is a scam – have you given her money?’ | Naima Brown

The scammers my dad encountered were not sophisticated, my father suspended his own disbelief wilfully. But many scammers are sophisticated and they’re getting harder to detect

Bomba wasn’t the first, but she exploded in our lives like a digital grenade. She’s not real, I told my dad – then in his early seventies. I was in Australia at this time, where I’ve lived for the last 13 years. Physically speaking, he was still in California – but within himself he was adrift in a rapidly sinking lifeboat, floating in a morass of debris primarily of his own doing. But it must be said before I go further: my dad isn’t the bad guy in this story. Not this time. At times, he was the bad guy in other people’s stories– but that is another story.

If she’s not real, he countered, then how is it that we’ve spoken on the phone? That we video-chatted? I’ll admit that threw me. In most catfishing stories the catfish goes to great lengths to avoid video chatting. But my dad being the unreliable source he was, I wasn’t entirely sure he was being truthful about that detail. It was a heartbreaking thing to have to break down for my dad. My dad – who had once been a handsome, charismatic Lothario with swagger, with game – now had to be told by both of his daughters that this chic Bomba was 100% not real, not into him, not what or who she says she is. He didn’t believe us.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/NLetfPs