Over the weekend, my 84 year old mother was the victim of a conman.

He was Irish and came to her door with a story that he was a tree surgeon and was working in a garden behind hers (where there incidentally are no trees) and had dropped one of his tools into her garden. Could he please go and find it? She let him through the garage and into her back garden and followed him into the garden while he looked – unsuccessfully – for his saw or whatever it was.

It was only a couple of hours later that she realized that her handbag was missing. While she was in the garden, an accomplice had sneaked through the garage and into the house through the kitchen door.

The police have been marvellous and she had the sense to ring the bank right away and block her account. Luckily she doesn’t use a credit card or a bank cashpoint card, so they got her chequebook and the bank card she doesn’t use, but not much else. The thief has tried to use the bank card three times and the police are hopeful that they may get some CCTV photos of him.

Luckily my mother wasn’t coshed on the head, nor was her house trashed, but someone has betrayed her trust and taken advantage of her (maybe naive) helpfulness. Somebody has been in her house and not surprisingly she feels violated and shaken up – and probably not safe in her own home anymore (although she would never admit to that). Somebody knew that she was alone – the gardener she employed a couple of weeks ago, the taxi driver who took me to the airport last week, who knows? And somebody took advantage of a little old lady who was too willing to be helpful.

Sometimes the world is a sad place.

Helen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 at 8:42 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.