This would usually be under one of my This Week I have Been… posts but all I have been doing this week, outside of working and sorting out multiple issues for my mum and dad, is listening to a BBC Sounds Podcast – Intrigue – Million Dollar Lover. I have been absolutely engrossed in this true and very sad story of the romance between Carolyn, an eighty year old widow and fifty seven year old Dave, a homeless, ex-crystal meth addict. Oh, and did I mention that Carolyn is a multi millionaire? Predictably Carolyn’s two daughters, Sally and Susan do not approve of this drifter coming in and setting up home with their mother, and who can really blame them? As tensions rise it looks like there is a possibility that Dave might inherit Carolyn’s entire estate.  Carolyn is absolutely besotted with Dave and there seems no doubt that, despite his drinking and quick temper, he is making her happy. It is she that invites him into her bed and he almost just seems to go along with the arrangement. Is this real love or is something darker afoot?

Intrigue – Million Dollar Lover is written by Winifred Robinson who, Radio Four listeners will be familiar with from her work on You and Yours. The presenter is Sue Mitchell who lives in the same road as Carolyn in the wealthy Californian town of Cayucos. Dave was doing some work on Sue’s house and was friendly with her next door neighbour who has introduced Carolyn and Dave. It must have been difficult for Sue to remain impartial when she was actually involved in the every day lives of these people but she shows great empathy with all involved, especially Dave’s daughter’s Cody and Amber who have really had the most awful childhood because of Dave’s heartless and selfish behaviour. Amber’s story is simply staggering. Meanwhile, Carolyn’s daughters could teach a masterclass in how not to behave when your mum takes up with a potential bamboozler. Sue recorded the podcast in her own time mistakenly thinking it would be some light relief from the stories of “violence and exploitation” which she so often reports on.

Financial abuse of elders is incredibly common, Sue Mitchell describes it as a silent epidemic. When I worked for an estate agent I spoke to the niece of a vendor who was very upset that the property had to be sold in order that her uncle, the owner, could go into a care home. The uncle lived in Kent and the niece in Scotland so understandably she was not able to offer much in the way of day to day practical help and she felt very guilty about this. The niece told me that she had employed a half a dozen different carers and that every single one of them had stolen from her uncle. Now this seems vey unlucky and I am sure there are many carers out there who do a wonderful job of looking after the people they are paid to help. Years ago, when my lovely grandmother was alive, a local man offered to mow the miniscule square of grass that made up her garden, he said he’d love to help her out. He charged her a week’s pension. I have mentioned in another post that roofers climbed on my elderly aunt’s property without her knowledge, dislodged some tiles and then tried to extract money from her to repair it. She had to spend several hundred pounds calling out a reputable company to fix the damage. The same aunt is a bit of a Facebook addict and will engage in online chat with anybody, I suppose she is lonely. She posts mostly on missing dog pages and then strangers send her private messages which she replies to, fortunately she abandons the conversation when they raise the prospect of her sending them some money. When her Facebook account was hacked I got the job of recovering it. Her messenger had been spamming her friends list and, as I tried to resolve this, I was horrified to see that people who she has known for years and considered friends were messaging her saying things like they were surprised my aunt had only sent a small amount of money for their grandson’s twenty first birthday, perhaps she could see her way to sending another, bigger cheque. My usually very confident aunt was amazingly meek and compliant in her replies and even apologised profusely, she did also send further funds . The cheek of these people. My aunt has no children and I believe it is her intention to leave her estate to The Dog’s Trust but these people are constantly circling. One couple, in their fifties, persuaded her to drive them the twenty five miles to Gatwick airport, they have three grown up children but decided to ask a frail, eighty-nine woman stating that they could not afford a taxi (although they could afford a fortnight in Spain). They even let her lift the suitcases and then, two weeks later she collected them. They offered no contribution towards fuel. Afterwards my aunt rang me, very upset and said that she felt silly for letting them take advantage of her that way. What parasites, I was furious when she told me – perhaps not exactly financial abuse but I feel they deserve a special mention.

My mother-in-law has had money stolen from her more times than I can count, more than a hundred thousand pounds. She lost most of it through a time-share scheme advertised in the back of the Daily Mail a decade or so ago. The properties were not even built. For as long as she is judged to have capacity there is nothing my husband or his brothers can do about it, she will not listen to their warnings. Last week a man charged her four hundred pounds to put up one shelf, it wasn’t even straight. For a woman who grew up in the East End of London she is remarkably gullible. In Million Dollar Lover – Sue Mitchell discussed research which has shown that, as we age, our ability to make sound financial decisions diminishes along with our eyesight and reaction time. Carolyn’s daughters wanted to protect her fortune by having her declared as lacking the mental capacity to manage her own affairs, but Carolyn passed the memory tests. I know from my own mum that, for years, the tests she had at the memory clinic gave a result of her having just mild cognitive decline when it was clear to us, her family, that her condition was far worse than that.

Million Dollar Lover is absolutely addictive listening, there are ten episodes and you will find yourself constantly changing your mind about the motives of those involved. I listen to a lot of BBC podcasts, the thriller Tracks, probably being my all time favourite, but I had never come across Intrigue before. There are seven different seasons, all different stories, that I can now look forward to listening to

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001t3nf – Intrigue – Million Dollar Lover on BBC Sounds

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash