Is my mom deceived or delusional?

Neither. She’s mentally ill and/or has dementia symptoms.

From what you write, she has definitely reached a point where she should not have a phone. My dad was similar, and very attached to his phone and computer.

One day, suddenly, he was told that his electronics stopped working--some "therapeutic fibbing" was necessary, for his sake.

We switched to letting him watch documentaries on Youtube--not about news or politics--on an ipad "that did not have email access," another therapeutic fib.

That was the only way to get his delusional behavior to stop.

You have another post going

https://www.agingcare.com/questions/my-mom-lies-about-me-to-other-people-just-to-make-herself-look-better-how-should-i-respond-496800.htm

It was mentioned in that post that Mom may have Denentia. What you write here sounds like Dementia. You should get Mom an appt with a Neurologist. He will run tests to see if this is Dementia or just a mental problem.

You can try one shot of changing her phone number as unlisted. But as soon as she gives that number out, then all bets are off and she is no longer safe. Do you have control of the checkbook?

Please take her to see a pyschiatrist as well as a neurologist. It can take time to see these speacialists depending on where you live and may need to see a primary care Dr. first, depending on insurance. She appears to be ill based on your post and needs a diagnosis and a treatment plan. Wishing you all the best.

My mom has schizophrenia. She believes all kinds of crazy stuff. The meds help a lot. To be honest, she has always been one to believe crazy stuff, but that got so much worse over the last ten years or so. It might be time to get a psych eval and get your mom declared incompetent and you can take charge of her money and take away her phone. My mom was calling the FBI to report her delusions about her neighbor. I'm also pretty sure I have several cousins that think Elvis is still alive and calls my one disabled cousin on the phone or sends him letters.

My mom was convinced she had a large refund/prize from a “government agent” that needed thousands in insurance and shipping. Luckily we had POA paperwork that we submitted to the bank so we could better monitor her affairs. We also reported to every agency possible the situation, mailing address, copies of checks. Likely never to see a dime back. If you can, send yourself screenshots and if possible without her knowledge, put blocks on all non-contacts then delete any that seem out of place for her circle. From this experience we had my mom thoroughly tested and she has Alzheimer’s.

You need to take control over your mom's finances. She is very delusional.If she believes she is literally communicating with these people, your mom cannot make judgement decisions anymore.

Your mother belongs to the generation that was raised to trust people. My father was the same. He fell for a scam but it took someone at the post office showing him the address he was mailing money to on her phone -- a vacant trailer in a rundown trailer park. No way was the government receiving payments from him there, right? That's when he finally told me that he'd been duped. We reported to police and several government agencies. Here are some helpful links for you to read. There was a similar post in the last few months and I responded with some other links there, search for that one.

https://www.usa.gov/imposter-scams

https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77473

NanaBanana16: Pose your concerns to her neurologist.

Why is she allowed to be on the internet / computer?
Does she have a medical diagnosis?
What are your legal rights or responsibilities?

If she is considered of sound mind, she can do what she wants.
Someone may need to manage her finances.
Put limits on all her bank accounts.
Can you do this?

Gena / Touch Matters

Your Mom is simply a victim of conspiracy theories and scams. According to the last issue of The Week Magazine, last year (2024) 10 BILLION was taken from gullible American Citizens by organized groups called "pig butchers", This amount is up 66% from the year before; these organizations, often "employing" slave labor, and mostly located in Asia are now called "organized crime" by our government.

If there is proof of incompetency and someone with POA it is time to protect your mom's assets.

She's probably crossed over from delusion into dementia. Does she live alone? If she does then she probably shouldn't be and certainly should not have unsupervised access to the internet and money.

Try to get her to her doctor for some dementia testing. If it turns out she's found to be competent and just a nutcase jumping down every conspiracy rabbit hole, there's really not much you can do about it. If such is the case you should plainly tell her the wise old Chinese proverb:

'A fool and their money are soon parted'.

Make her understand that if she gives all of her money away to scammers and nonsense she will have nothing to live on. Make sure she knows that you will not be financially supporting her at any time and nor will you be her caregiver either. That she needs to hold onto her money because she will need it. She will probably get very angry with you and maybe even stop speaking to you for a while. You have to tell her this though. Get her to her doctor and make it very clear to her that you will not rescue her, become her caregiver, or live together because she goes broke and can't afford care.

Elder and disability care, nursing homes and more are inextricably merged with current policies, affecting all of us on this site.

My 85 yr old dad does not have any dementia. He's never been very smart, and he has spent a lifetime avoiding hard work, so he falls for every get-rich-quick scheme put before him. He has spent too much money joining pyramid sales opportunities, and buys supplements promoted by online "Doctors" who are selling something secret, that "your doctor doesn't want you to know about".
Thankfully, I don't worry about it too much. He is married to a woman 20 years younger, and she has taken over managing their finances and keeping his spending habits somewhat in line. She discovered she had to take control when his reckless spending caused them to go into bankruptcy.
He also doesn't have any original ideas, so he adopts the ideology of his circle of friends, who are currently some right-wing extremists and he repeats and believes a lot of the conspiracy nonsense they rant on about. He boasts that he is ultra conservative, but I know if his circle of popular friends were liberal, he would be too. He's a follower.
All this to say, there are gullible people who follow wherever they are lead.

Has your mom always been this way? Do you see her sounding more confused and vulnerable, being easily taken advantage of? It's probably a good idea for someone in the family to help take over her finances, just to protect her from losing everything. Either convince her it is time to assign someone as POA, or get her evaluated by a neurologist and take steps to have her declared mentally incompetent to manage her own affairs.

It sounds like mom is still driving if she gets herself to appointments. Very independent indeed. Unfortunately it will be next to impossible to take control of her finances, to change her phone, or to make her see any doctor she doesn’t want to get a negative diagnosis from. Tell her bluntly that what is happening to her is called ‘pig butchering’, and whole rooms full of scammers are joined against her. Show her some AARP articles on how seniors are the easy target of scammers for billions every year. Remind her that if ‘it sounds too Good to be true, it usually is’.

And I want to add, I too agree that this forum is important, and do not like to see it devolving into political sniping. I THINK WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT.

Unfortunately, you don't need to have dementia to fall for the Trump Bucks scam. There are a lot of people who are of sound mind that have paid for these things. They are being told that at some point Trump will be changing the money system in the US and each Trump Buck will be worth 10,000 dollars or something like that. It's important to note that Trump himself has nothing to do with this (at least not that I could discern) but that the people who are being pitched this scam are known to have these leanings and or have been sending money to other "conservative" causes. The way that these people find out it's a scam is when they take it to the bank and try to turn them in for real money. This began before Trump was re-elected and has ramped up now that he is back in office because obviously, if you bought these Trump Bucks in 2021 and you think it is now time to turn them in, you will go to the bank or to another location that the scammers said you could go (it was like WalMart or JCP or something like that) and the banks are familiar with this scam. There is just nothing they can do about it. The money is gone.

While I don't want this to devolve into politics, I think it is very important for people to understand that scammers are well aware of some of the loopholes in this country's political donation operations. They used to be able to say they were calling on "behalf of" or "worked alongside" the cops or the police unions or something like that and they got away with it. The donator would receive a sticker that went on their car that they'd been told would give them a little bit of an up on others if they were ever pulled over. They could say they supported the police and the cop might give them a pass on a moving violation. There was no definite promise, but it was strongly implied.

Unfortunately, the people donating to "conservative" causes are on a list. Anyone can buy this list. It is also true of "liberal" causes but the people who donate to "conservatives" are seen as the easier marks who will donate more as long as they hear that it will support "conservative" causes. So your family member (or you) doesn't have to have dementia but please be aware that the scammers are highly aware of the fact that "conservative" donators will spend more and they will do so for things that might sound suspect to someone else. It's been a well known fact that conservative voters are more likely to donate to causes in the form of charity and so it is important to keep that in mind before you or anyone else donates to any cause. You can look up which charities give the most to what they say they are collecting for, and you could also check to see if the company exists at all, or if there are any complaints against them. Again, you don't have to have to dementia to fall for this, and it isn't always obvious it's a scam at all. I'm not even talking about things from overseas. Some of these things are more or less legal, within the letter of the law, but are really just raising money to make it, and putting a pittance toward the cause they say they support. You only need to give 10% in order to keep it legal in many cases and put the rest toward the operation of the business that does the collecting.

So please keep in mind that anyone who is a Republican is going to be targeted more than the rest of the country and this is not a political statement I am making. I am telling you what you can easily look up and verify for yourselves. If you are a Republican you are on many lists, and if you have donated to anything "conservative" you are on other lists. Scammers buy the lists and it is a known fact. I am not saying it doesn't happen to liberals, it does, it's just that the people who do this for a living are aware of who to target. Elderly, lonely, Republicans are at the top of that list. These people do this for a living and they know their jobs very well.