You might be surprised about this, but as people age, so do their brains. They do not function as well and sometimes develop serious issues. Stop assuming everyone has the same resources to work with. Protect the vulnerable from bad actors.

Avoiding scams is as easy as walking a single step. Yet almost everyone has tripped at least once in their life

We're exposed to scams all the time, all it takes is falling for one of them. Have a little empathy, because it absolutely could be you one day

I wasn't with you at first, people age at different rates and cognitive decline comes for us all, but the point you make about Elon Musk is convincing enough.

I won't pity him but I also hope they catch the theif.

Old people spent almost all their lives living in a different world, where you could trust and believe in certain things. That world has dissolved just as their brains got too old to adapt to the change. It's hard for everyone to keep up, but for some people it's impossible. My father in law is like that, his smartphone is always full of crap because if he sees a popup advert telling him he needs to install something, he'll do as he's told. He can't tell the difference between an advert and a system message. He grew up in a world where most of the time you could basically trust what people were telling you, especially if it looked official. Modern technology and media has no consideration for such vulnerable people, except for finding ways to exploit them.

Do not redeem saar!

I didn't actually witness, this but one of these scam call centres called my bosses bosses well he was attending a cybersecurity conference. Unfortunately there's no actual video of the event but apparently everyone involved had a good time stringing the idiot along for about 45 minutes.

I cannot help reading that to myself with a thick Indian accent.

See, it came to me in the voice of The Music Man.

"Yessir! Genuine, on-time, serves you wine when you dine. This here's gonna be a package you'll be thrilled to receive. Just 48 hours and its all yours, sign on the dotted line, no that's just fine. Here, here, and here, good sir. You've got excellent penmenship and a smile to match."

Maybe it's because he's an idiot.

Yes

I don't see where his wife is a gold digger. According to the article, he's fallen for repeated scams and, the way they work is that once you've fallen for one scam, they sell your information to other scammers as an easy mark. As her spouse, he probably has access to all her money; if they get divorced, she'll at least be able to protect her half of their assets.

[Notice that it doesn't say his wife wants to leave him, just get divorced.]

I feel like it's not just being tech-savvy though. He seems to lack basic common sense.

Why would you assume that a free car giveaway would necessitate you paying transfer fees, why wouldn't that have already been pre-arranged. After all it's a Tesla car presumably Tesla the ones who are going to deliver it. Additionally why would the competition be exclusive to a niche Facebook group and not a national campaign. It all just seems very obviously a scam.

My parents aren't particularly tech savvy and often send me AI garbage but they wouldn't be easy marks because both of them have critical thinking skills, or at least my mother does. But my dad has learnt to do what he's told.

I dunno. My mom is his age and taught us how to build crystal radios when we were kids for fun. She still does it every few years with the grandkids as they grow up. She's still sharp as a whisk.

Cutting someone loose who makes terrible financial decisions is not gold digger behavior. They are likely retired and have limited resources to worry about and he just blew a big chunk of that. This also doesn't speak well of his intelligence overall so maybe this was a long time coming.

You don't have to be tech savvy to realise the adage "if it sounds too good to be true...". I would have thought Americans of all people would develop armour against scams. But even a modicum of due diligence like asking relatives, or googling his situation might have protected him.

I should add that my dad is 80 and housebound and gets scam calls all the time and bats them off like flies so being old is not an excuse.

He donates money to himself.

Just shove em back in there 👌