My mother is sending thousands to her K-Pop “fiancé.” I’m at my wit’s end. | #datingscam | #romancescams

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Delia Cai is filling in as Prudie for Jenée Desmond-Harris while she’s on parental leave. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

My mother is currently the victim of a romance scam. To be specific, she’s been the victim of romance scams, plural, since late October of last year. First, it was an influencer she liked, then it’s been two or three entities pretending to be a K-Pop star she finds attractive, or entities pretending to be the management of said star and another pretending to be the manager of the group BTS. It started with sending gift cards and has now progressed to moving large amounts of money to new bank accounts (one of which I believe is with a fake banking service), sending crypto payments, and sending thousands of dollars to these entities.

I confronted her about the first scammer after she tried to have me “help” her by sending money through my PayPal account to the scammer impersonating the influencer. I showed her evidence it wasn’t him and fought with her about why she trusted a stranger over her own daughter, despite “his” obvious lies and the real influencer posting he would never message people for money. She seemingly snapped out of it for a minute, and admitted she was scammed, but refused to report it. She also remained secretive with her phone—which I used to have access to at her request to help her with things.

I think gaining the attention of the first K-Pop impersonator around the same time helped her move on from the first scammer. There’s been at least three of them, to my estimate, and they’ve all, like the first scammer, quickly started professing their love to her, and she’s fallen for it. I think deep down she knows she’s being fooled because she doesn’t talk about it to my siblings or me, but it’s giving her some sort of thrill. Which would be okay if she wasn’t sending tens of thousands away for it. She doesn’t know how much I know, or that I’ve seen the messages on the rare occasions I’ve seen her phone. She shuts down or outright lies to me when I’ve tried to gently talk to her about it or who she’s talking to. I’ve only been able to learn more because I have access to two of her email accounts, and a bank account.

It’s made me sick to see how she let herself be deceived and the amounts she’s sending. I’ve had to take a break because it was affecting my mental health. Recently, I’ve read that she’s apparently “engaged” to this impersonator…

And she has been emailing his alleged management company to arrange a visit this week—sending money to make it happen. Of course, this visit was canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances” and they now need more money.

I’m at my wits end. I’ve called the AARP fraud network for help and they’ve directed me to report to the FTC and to make IC3 report. I’ve posted on scam forums and been directed to do the same and receiving mixed advice about confronting her—to either go hard or not push too hard, to contact groups such as Social Catfish for help. I’ve tried to spend more time with her and remind her how much she’s loved and valued, but this “relationship” has become her main focus. What else can I do? How can I protect my mother?

—Daughter of the Catfished

Dear Daughter,

If your mother isn’t making her “romantic” activities open for discussion, it’s possible there’s still a way in via having a conversation about the money involved. I think it would be worth telling your mother that you’d like to sit down with her and have a serious discussion about financial planning. You mentioned that she is living on a pension and already on a tight budget, so you could frame this conversation as simply one that ensures that her finances are in line with the lifestyle she wants to maintain in the coming decades.

This will require delicate work: Ideally, your mother’s “expenditures” on her recent “relationships” will come up, and you can express both concern for who these people are, but also stay focused on the larger issue, which is how her spending habits on these supposed paramours affect her finances and long-term retirement. If she’s able to recognize that her spending habits are detrimental to her financial well-being, perhaps the two of you can discuss whether you need to start taking charge of the big stuff (such as paying rent, or changing the password to certain accounts so that she can’t access them on whim) while she receives an “allowance” that she can then spend on whatever (or whomever) she wants. It would be an imperfect solution, but it would at least help prevent your mother from immediate and total financial ruin.

Your mother is still in her early 60s, but I wouldn’t rule out the option of having her mental well-being evaluated. The onset of sudden, erratic behavior paired with reckless spending and elaborate delusions can often serve as signs that there’s a deeper issue at hand, especially as we get older. But you’ll need a doctor to make any kind of diagnosis; if there is one to be made, that means you may have to go down the road of obtaining financial guardianship of your mother. But that’s a few steps ahead.

For the moment, I think you need to focus on her health and putting guardrails up, if possible, around your mother’s finances. Once you have a clearer picture of what’s going on from a few different angles, only then can you really open the question about what she’s doing talking to these scammers and why you don’t think it’s a good idea.

Dear Prudence,

I have celiac disease and cannot eat gluten. At a recent all-day work conference, I told the organizers that I had celiac disease and needed gluten-free meal options. They told me that along with my gluten-free meal there would also be gluten-free muffins at morning tea. There were six small gluten-free blueberry muffins, and a rather large basket of small chocolate muffins. I took one muffin, ate it, decided I was still hungry, and returned to get another one. At this point, there was only one muffin left, and I overheard the person ahead of me in line say that they were going to take it because they didn’t like chocolate, and even though it was gluten-free, it would probably be nicer than the chocolate muffins.

I interrupted and said that unless they medically needed gluten-free food, I’d prefer they left the muffin for me because I have celiac disease and cannot eat the chocolate muffins. It was an awkward situation all round, but they agreed that I could have the muffin and left the line—so, I had two muffins and this person had none. I think I did the right thing by speaking up, but my colleague who attended the conference with me said I should have just let the person ahead of me take the muffin. They said it would have been fairer for us each to have one muffin—but I think it would have been less fair if someone’s flavor preference overrode my medical need. Which one of us is right?

—Gluten Intolerant

Dear Intolerant,

I think you were right to speak up about the muffin, even if it made for an awkward situation. The other person probably didn’t realize that the gluten-free muffins were offered to meet someone’s specific dietary need (yours), and it sounds like they handled the confusion graciously.

In a perfect world, the organizers of this conference would have either made it clear that the muffins were intended for those with needs like yours, or they would have provided enough gluten-free muffins where you wouldn’t have had to debate who got the last one. I think this was a communication/organization issue that put you and this other person on the spot.

Personally, I think it’s a bit rude, then, of your colleague to insert their opinion about this whole muffin debacle to you. They’re not the designated arbiter of muffins, and I assume they don’t know what it’s like to have a specific dietary need like yours that needs to be taken seriously. The question of how “fair” it was that you got to have two muffins is beyond the point; it was fair for the organizers to take your needs into consideration, and it was fair of you to speak up about your needs again with this other person. If your colleague wants to argue over what seems “fair” to them, tell them that having celiac disease isn’t exactly fair now, is it?

Dear Prudence,

One of my best friends, “Nina,” recently posted a kind of angsty social media story about feeling rejected and left out by her friends and family, and because she’s not the kind of person to over dramatically fish for engagement on social media, I’m concerned!

The thing is, I think I know why she might be feeling this way, and I’m wondering if it’s the right time give her some insight? Nina and I see each other and chat very often, so I feel pretty confident that I’m not included in the friends she is referring to. But the reason I see her often is because I’m a proactive plan maker! Nina pretty much always says yes when I ask her to hang one-on-one or plan a small group hang, but I can count the individual times Nina has initiated plans. It seems like when she has time off, her first thought is to go for a long hike by herself or something like that rather than reach out to friends. She has mentioned her sister and brother-in-law expressing their frustration that she doesn’t see her nephew enough, and said she thought it was their job to invite her over more because they have such a strict schedule.

Nina did once tell me she felt excluded when I had a holiday party she couldn’t make it to, but I invited her! For some reason, she just texted after the event started to check in that it was still happening, but I wasn’t checking my phone by that point in the party. She is normally a lovely person and not as self-centered as this letter probably makes it seem—but I am seeing a pattern here of her wanting everyone to come to her without reciprocating. I’m used to being the plan-maker in most of my friendships because I’m just that kind of person, so I don’t mind; but I assume her other relationships are suffering because of this trait. Should I take some time to open up the conversation about this blind spot of hers?

—Trying to Be Supportive

Dear Supportive,

To put it bluntly, no, I don’t think you should give anyone unsolicited feedback about their relationship/friendship problems. Unless Nina comes to you specifically and asks if you have any advice for how she can improve her relationships, I’m afraid you have to keep these observations to yourself. Even if you approached her with the best of intentions, she will likely take it personally and become defensive; people don’t like to be told what they’re doing “wrong,” even if they’re being openly angsty.

That said, I do think you can make specific requests to Nina regarding how she treats her friendship with you. You can express to her your desires to be the one who gets invited along to something, or for her to instigate plans with you. Frame it as an issue of what you would like more of in your friendship with her, not as an issue of what she’s doing wrong or how she’s disappointing you.

I can imagine that Nina may have some feelings of insecurity about being the one to make plans and then getting rejected; you may have to reassure her that you’re very happy to be friends, and that even if sometimes you can’t respond to her right away (as in the case of the holiday party) or can’t say yes to everything, you would like her to assume that you want her around. Honestly, I think that’s what she needs to hear the most: something like, Hey, just FYI, I hope you always assume that I want you at the party, or that I want to respond to you, or that I want to hang out. Hopefully, Nina will be able to extrapolate the specific feedback that you’ve given her about your friendship together into a broader way to tackle her other friendships and relationships. But it’s not your job to make that leap for her—all you can do as a friend is to open the conversation about your one-on-one interactions with her.

—Delia

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