Chapter 139

Wherever someone I know learns of what happened with my mom, a few questions always pop up. One of the more commonly asked questions is “Why did the banks allow this to happen?”. Honestly, when Halloween first happened, this was one of the questions I had as well. Surely, there must have been some systems in place to resist scams? What happened to those? 

Well…as it turns out…the answer was very political…

Over the few weeks after Halloween, damage control for our situation would be moved into motion full force. I found a real estate agent who was a friend and who could understand the situation at hand. Together, we got the house on the market at a record pace. Naturally, since everything was very rushed, there was still a lot of animosity between me and mom at every step of the journey.

I had to babysit my mom to go to an accounting firm to see what they could offer in terms of advice and I also now had to babysit her as we went to the bank to see how things were. I think my mom secretly enjoyed the company but I really did not. For me, the entire ordeal was fueled by anxiety. There mustn’t be a single dollar my mom could move without me knowing now. This was the compromise I had to work with since my mom won’t just relinquish her control over her assets. It was a waste of my time and a huge problem in my psyche but what option did I have? There had been too many surprises.

And yet, when we got to the bank, there were still more surprises to come.

Remember how I said my mom was an avid Trump supporter? Well…yeah…She supported his campaign despite the fact that we’re Canadian and honestly, I am still not entirely sure why it stuck with her so much. Even when her political ideas started pushing everyone away, she still kept at it. The more she supported Trump, the more she found a distaste for Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister in office when Trump was in office for the first time. She made some points that right wing Canadians made but if you ask me, I think it was probably just because Trump and Trudeau were on the opposite sides of the political spectrum that she just really hated Trudeau’s guts. 

Now, I didn’t care much about politics and honestly, I really REALLY did not care about my mom’s political views. In fact, when things were going well, I would often just chalk up my mom’s more political side as a weird character quirk. However, as I went into the bank with my mom for the first time after learning about the scams, I was suddenly forced to pay close attention to my mom’s political ideals as they had seeped into her ideas about banking.

Why does this relate to our current situation at hand? Well…recall that a handful of chapters ago I mentioned the freedom convoy. Yeah. That’s why this is relevant. 

For those who don’t know…During the COVID season, there was a protest in Canada at one point that led to the freezing of bank accounts of certain protesters. This was widely regarded as a really bad move by the Trudeau administration and has led to really poor optics on government power in general. Now, recall also that my mom had actually attended the protests.

While she never got her bank account frozen, she knew people who did. Then, her anger towards the Trudeau government found an outlet with moral superiority, my mom’s highest tier in her value system. She spoke out in anger more and more from this and honestly, I tried to mostly just block out all her messaging during that time because I, myself, am not someone who likes engaging in political discussions. 

Despite my aversion and wanting to be steered clear from all political talk, my mom still messaged me about it. From her messages, I came to understand, against my will, her views and opinions on distrusting the government in general. I stopped paying attention at some point but as it turns out, this train of thought would then, SOMEHOW, translate into a populist theory that all of the government’s reach was bad and dystopian. She also gained an associated strong opinion about the banks! In her eyes, the banks were not to be trusted due to their ties to the government.

As you’ll recall, the first initial deposit to the scam was a rather large number and required a remortgaging of the house. To remortgage the house and to wire such a large sum of money to an unknown agent required my mom to talk with her financial advisor. That financial advisor happened to be my financial advisor as well. Unfortunately, it would only be after my mom’s scam history was ousted before they would be allowed to tell me what had transpired. 

When my financial advisor first heard of what my mom was trying to do, her initial reaction was to convince my mom to stop. Then, when it didn’t work, she actually began to cry. She begged my mom “please don’t do this”. 

My financial advisor knew me and knew that I had plans for the future to start a family. She also knew that I had a wedding coming up before that. Both of these life goals can be safely assumed to be goals that may require family involvement of some sort. She was thinking of me and how my mom’s current path would likely lead to trouble for the entire family as she pleaded to my mom. 

She cried and cried as she begged my mom not to throw away this much money at nothing but still, my mom ignored her. Thinking back, my mom’s actions were likely partially caused by her being under the spell of the Professor of Professors, the main scammer in her WeChat group, and partially caused by my mom’s political background and distrust of the banking system. If that distrust of the banking system seems like a leap in logic to throw away money, it is. But let me explain a bit more. 

My mom, ignoring all pleas from my financial advisor, decided that since this was her money, she has the right to do whatever she wants with it. For her, using her money how she saw fit was a patriotic freedom and one that was necessary to exercise. An answer that was expectedly political and egotistical. 

Our financial advisor, then, got 2 colleagues who spoke mandarin, my mom’s mother tongue, to explain it to her more in detail in case there were any issues with language barriers being in place. Even with mandarin speaking persuasion, again, my mom said she had the right to do whatever she wants and denied all reason.

The mandarin speaking advisors then got a mouthing off by my mom, who stated that the Trudeau government had frozen assets before and the resistance she was meeting at a bank was just another instance of government over reach. She then went a step further and told them that this was just another sign that Canada was turning into the communist China she fled from when she was younger. 

After this, my financial advisor called cyber security (yes, there is a division of these people) and told them to explain the situation to my mom. They told my mom that this entire thing was a straight up scam. But even then, my mom still did not budge. 

Having been completely defeated, my financial advisor gave in to my mom’s request. She considered messaging me about it but that would be breaking confidentiality. Not only would that mean my financial advisor would lose her job, but with my mom’s consistent hostility towards the bank, she was also worried that my mom may take legal action against her.

I thought about this many times over and no matter how I look at it, I couldn’t blame my financial advisor. She really did try to stop my mom from doing something reckless. Honestly speaking, it is unfair to ask her to do more.

My financial advisor had been traumatized by just the sheer amount of money my mom was moving around all the time and it was really weighing on her. When I finally found out about everything months later and finally went to her with my mom, it came as a relief. With both of us in the room, she was now able to share everything.

She found some solace in that she no longer had to keep a secret. All the while, I sunk deeper into the opposite. 

What was there to even say at this point. 

In my head, my mom was too far gone. I was out of words to describe the situation. Who could someone possibly be this delusional and irresponsible with themselves? If no one warned my mom, I could at least give her a pass but there had been signs. There had been resistance. Yet my mom pushed through to destroy everything. 

Aside from my angry comments directed at mom, the meet up was pretty much completely useless outside of one thing. My mom and I signed a form of power of attorney for her financial assets. This does not mean she was turning all her assets over to me, it just meant that the next time something like this happens, the banks can contact me about it. 

IF I COULD GIVE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE TO ANYONE OUT THERE WHO ARE ANXIOUS ABOUT BEING IN A SIMILAR SITUATION, IT WOULD BE THIS:

Get power of attorney from your bank for your parent’s bank accounts.

If you get power of attorney for your parent’s bank accounts from your bank, it lets you discuss the current state of your parent’s accounts. I.e. For my bank, it means that the bank is allowed to contact you when something feels off. 

To be honest, there’s not really that much of a downside to this. You can’t take money out of their accounts and don’t really have that much access. It’s more like just a window to look through. Furthermore, you are allowed to put money into their accounts in case, just as an example, your father goes into a coma and the electric bills are still registered to him and his bank accounts. 

Now, before you get the idea that this is a cure all for scams, it is not. Contacting you as things are happening is pretty all there is to it. You’ll be notified. That’s all. You don’t have the power to stop any transactions from going through if the account’s owners really push for it. As you’d imagine, because of this, there will always be a level of anxiety I can’t shake. While this was a small level of security, it wasn’t nearly enough to overcome the anxieties the family was dealing with. 

When we left the bank, my mom tried to calm my anxiety more with a solution she came up with. She told me that, for my sake, she will now tell me about every single purchase she makes. She thought this was good because it’s like letting me keep a track of her but without handing over all her assets to me. My response? “Are you f*cking kidding me?”. Her telling me anything was like a corrupt bank reporting their own internal investigations.

Furthermore, nobody wanted to even talk with her anymore. My uncle, T1, T2 and pretty much anyone else who knew of the fiasco all wanted to keep mom at an arm’s length. She was corrupted and her mental competency put into question. I was in the same boat. It’s not fun talking with someone who lies. This was a negative. Yet my mom kept insisting that this was her doing me a favor. 

Though I hated it, what could I do? I needed information and oversight. If all I can get is biased and untrustworthy oversight, then I’ll just have to make due with that. She had essentially forced me into an impossible situation. 

Remember how I said we can change memories about events that happened in the past with context from the present? If I had to guess at a point in time when my positive experience in life with my mom vanished, I would say it happened around this time.