Chapter 138

Sometimes, it feels like the news constantly gives out bigger and bigger headlines for bigger and bigger amounts of money lost to scams. They do this because the more shocking it is the more it is likely to catch your attention and honestly, who could blame them? I don’t. However the information gets out there, if more people are paying attention to how the vulnerable could be exploited, the more we can hopefully amend it all. 

The problem, however, is that after the headline, the public often stops paying attention. Rarely do news outlets go more into detail as to how people afforded the scams that ruined them and the painful process of picking themselves up after the fact. I think this is partially because the stupidity in the situation often leads to victim shaming and partially because the reality of things on the side of the victim is rather hard to read. 

Experiencing it first hand, I can tell you that picking up the pieces post scam is oftentimes too painful to even think about. But that’s just the thing. The harder it is to write about, the more necessary it becomes to write about it. I think the truth needs to be told. Brushing it off is unfortunately way too easy. A scam can even feel like just a one time event. But it’s not. If you’ve ever tried to move money around in an emergency or tried to withdraw a lot of money all at once, you’ll know that getting the money to get scammed comes with wounds that rot if not dealt with. 

From what I disclosed already, you should be able to figure out the math isn’t really adding up. A total loss of $680K is accounted for in a remortgage of $480K and $200K from private loans. Why did I mention that my mom also lost a huge chunk of money from RRSP? Where does that money even fit in here? Did she lose that later on? Nope. $680K may have been the initial loss but as she turned to loans at some point, there were interest rates that needed to be accounted for. 

That’s right, getting scammed a huge amount of money doesn’t account for the interest rates that you are left with post crisis. There’s always more money to be lost.

Sigh…

Okay, let’s talk a little about the debt my mom’s currently in. The RRSP she took out of her account was used to pay the exorbitant interest rate of the private loans, the remortgaged house and her living expenses. Seeing as how she’s been scammed for a while and her monthly needed income to just stay in the house was around $25K, you can expect that the RRSP she had withdrawn was rather substantial.

Now, those who are Canadian are living in Canada, you may have already read between the lines here and realized that there is another gut punch that is coming. This is the fact that RRSP (the Canadian retirement plan account), when withdrawn, counts as income and is taxable. 

We needed even more money than the $680K that was lost.

Where do we go from there? Well, if we sell the house my mom was currently living in, the profit from the sale will settle all of the debt of the private loan and then some. The little bit of extra is not something we would enjoy however as that will go straight into three things. 

First, selling a house that was not complete in its mortgage term comes with penalties. Also, the act of selling a house in general comes with fees for accounting, lawyers and real estate agents. 

Second, the selling of a house takes time. Time of which burns through our family’s resources in interest rates and will likely require loans with even more interest rates. 

Third, a little bit of money will need to be set aside for when the tax man comes around next year when my mom would have to pay a ridiculous amount of income tax. 

The only saving grace from this realization? My mom hadn’t contributed to her RRSP the year yet and that meant the extra money could be put into the RRSP contribution room to reduce her income a tiny tad. Honestly though, this was like saving pennies after losing the federal reserve. 

I worked this out pretty quickly the night that the truth came out but honestly, I never really thought about how tedious this situation was until we started putting it into action. It sounds easy enough on paper but in reality, it was anything but. 

Back to that night though, after I told everyone that the house needed to be sold, I actually got a few points of contention first. Everyone in the family knew how big a deal the house was to my mom and tried to explore other means to resolve the loans. Eventually though, they came to realize that the private loans were a plague on any other options we had. There was honestly not a lot of room for debate. The house, the nest egg my mom had built, had to go. There was no other way around this. 

Once everyone eventually calmed down and realized that despite my horrible tone and anger, I made a good point, they came on board with the idea. 

But then, the next problem that happens with scams hit us…

Between now and when my mom’s house would be sold, we’d all need to chip in money to help my mom stay afloat. However, who would lend money to someone who had just lost such a large sum of money and had lied about it?

No one wanted to speak it out loud but honestly, I was so done with this sh*t I just couldn’t be filtered. I turned to my mom and spoke cleanly and with confidence.

“While we’re all here. You need to give me all your assets. You can’t be trusted to be in charge of anything anymore.”

A silence fell over the room. It lasted so long you’d think that the cellphone group call had dropped. 

But then, T1 broke the silence. He agreed with my sentiment.

Then my uncle also agreed. 

They told my mom that she has lost a lot of trust she had with us. I would be more responsible in our current and very delicate situation if I was now in charge of her finances. Everyone was in agreement…except for mom.

She resisted.

She resisted and said that this is not something you can ask of a parent. It was the equivalent to telling her to turn over the inheritance I would get in the future to me now. “You just don’t do this”. To this I responded…

“What inheritance? You’ve already lost it all”

She kept dodging the scenario. “Let’s just wait and see what happens after the house gets on the market”. “It’s too late today, let’s talk about this another day”. She kept insisting and dodging and no matter what we tried, she would not relinquish control over to me.

I knew from my previous soul searching that my mom’s hierarchy of needs was set in stone. Her own ego and belief was always going to trump my wellbeing or opinion. She always valued herself as above anything I was capable of and even in the face of evidence that she is compromised, she refused to admit her faults. 

We tried to beat this into her head. T1 told her the main reason I need her assets under my control is that no one can trust her to have money anymore. When T1 mentioned this I even told her that it doesn’t even have to be me, she could give it to T1. This still didn’t make it through to her.

T1 then continued to talk about how as long as she has control over some assets, all of the extended family would be in fear that she may lose it again. Furthermore and just stating the obvious, every time when she would need money in the next coming months while the house was on market, we would worry our money spent to bail her out would go towards another scam. Her untrustworthiness was too huge a mental burden on everyone. 

She didn’t care though. 

She still wouldn’t budge. 

What a f*cking sh*t show. 

I’m not sure if she couldn’t see the logic in our reasoning or if she just didn’t trust me nor anyone else with her assets but whatever the case was, I just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. At some point, I yielded. I was too tired. 

In the end, I said 

“Fine. You win.”

But I continued. 

“We’ll talk about this another day but one last thing. 

You’re dead to me.” 

When the night finally ended, I was exhausted and still angry as hell. I thought again and again about how easy it would be to just cut all ties with mom and let her drown in debt. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just leave my mom alone to suffer in her own stupidity. I needed to pull her out of there.