To this day, testifying against my father at his conservatorship hearing is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I was not the only person who testified, however, because a local police officer offered to testify on our family's behalf, and naturally we accepted.
Ironically, our best witness turned out to be my dad. When asked by the judge if he was going to stop sending money to the scammers, he said could not promise to refrain from doing so because he still believed he would eventually receive a large cash prize. His blatantly honest answer sealed his fate, and reinforced my conviction that without legal protection the only things that would stop him would be bankruptcy or death.
As for my dad not stopping, time eventually proved us both right as he continued to do the crooks' bidding until he died in May of this year. Sadly, the scam was his raison d'etre - primary reason for living - after my mother passed away in 2012. It gave him cause to get out not just of bed, but out of the house, and until he was sidelined by congestive heart failure he would sometimes disappear for hours to launder money through bank accounts opened on the orders of his Jamaican master, "Frank."
While there is no moral to my father's story, there are lessons learned and one of them is this: Some victims of advance fee scams aren't just taken in, their lives are taken over just as my dad's was, the last decade of his life.
One of the biggest ironies in my father's saga - and there are many - is that I probably owe a debt of gratitude to the scammers for giving my dad a reason to live after my mom died. I cannot bring myself to say thank you, however, because I feel an irrepressible urge to say something else ending in you that for the sake of decorum, I will not.
Hi Son of Scam, This is Dana Ballout, I'm a journalist and documentary producer working on a National Geographic series titled Trafficked. One of the topics we are looking into is Jamaican lottery scammers. We're looking for victims of scams who would be willing to share their story and came across this blog. If you'd be open to sharing your story and hearing more about the series, please email me at d.ballout@muck.tv or at my personal email dballout@gmail.com. What happened to your father sounds terrible, I'm sorry. So many elderly have fallen victim to these scams. I hope this episode helps spread some awareness. Kindly, Dana
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