Grandad’s dementia was triggered by fake taxmen hounding him
I lost £50,000 to fake taxmen... it was like being held at gunpoint From yesterday’s Mail
A GRANDFATHER was diagnosed with dementia and put in a care home because his family and GP did not realise he was being terrorised by tax conmen.
It was thought that Patrick Kelly was hallucinating when he started saying he owed money to the taxman and was going to be arrested at home.
relatives and doctors had no idea that the petrified 86-yearold, who had never been in debt, was being targeted by telephone scammers posing as HMRC officials. the fraudsters had threatened him with jail if he refused to repay fictitious tax debts.
diagnosing accelerated dementia triggered by a mysterious ‘traumatic event’, doctors decided he was no longer safe to live alone.
It was only months later – when Mr Kelly’s daughter was checking on his property – that she discovered fake HMRC messages on the answerphone warning him of his immediate arrest.
She told him he had been the victim of a scam but by then his condition had deteriorated so badly because of his anxiety that he was unable to return to living alone.
the harrowing story comes after a daily Mail investigation discovered that 10,000 UK residents are being targeted a day by fraudsters who operate from scam call centres in Ahmedabad, India. Scores of readers have described losing up to £50,000 to the criminals.
Mr Kelly’s daughter, Moira Swatman, said: ‘I feel so guilty not believing him. they have robbed him of independent living. It’s more than money, it’s his whole life.’
Before the phone calls started last May, widower Mr Kelly lived in his own flat and was ‘ very strong minded’ despite his age, she said.
the pensioner from norwich had worked in the dairy industry for 60 years and after retirement took a job as a courier, which he continued until he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
his daughter added: ‘he suddenly rang me one morning crying and saying “You’ve got to come and help me because I owe money to the taxman and someone’s watching my flat”. I thought he must have had a funny dream because I did his finances and knew he didn’t owe a penny, and never had. But it continued, and he kept begging me to close his windows and saying “they’re going to come for me and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong”.’
the final straw came when she found him sitting in his flat with a hammer in his hand. ‘he’d been there all night because he was scared of these people coming in the middle of the night,’ she said.
Mrs Swatman took her father to his GP and then to hospital, where baffled doctors struggled to understand how he had lost his mental capacity within a few days.
‘they said something traumatic must have happened,’ she said.
‘But I couldn’t understand what. I’d been with him the day before and he was his usual self, complaining about politicians and everything.’
doctors decided he was unsafe to live independently and he moved into a nursing home.
Mrs Swatman then found the answerphone messages.
‘It was like a lightbulb going off in my head,’ she said. ‘the message was almost word for word what he had been telling us.
‘It must have been so frustrating no one believing him. We just had no idea. By then, it was too late. the harrowing experience had caused a deterioration from which he hasn’t recovered.
‘despite his Parkinson’s, he could easily have had another year at home until this happened.’
Police said they couldn’t investigate because no money was taken.
following this paper’s expose, Chancellor Philip hammond promised to do more to stop the landline phone scammers and shut down the numbers they use.
But Mrs Swatman is worried that thousands more vulnerable people could suffer a similar fate. ‘these threatening calls push people to the edge mentally. I fear they’d be enough to drive some people to suicide,’ she said. ‘Much more needs to be done by the authorities.’