When Chris Mancinelli walked into his father’s home for the first time after the 79-year-old man died last summer, he stopped to look at family photos displayed on the refrigerator door. Near a crayon drawing spelling out “grandpa” in rainbow colours were photos of his father’s three granddaughters at a swimming pool.

But one image jumped out: a photo of Alexa Bliss, a professional wrestling personality.

Mancinelli’s father, Alfred, was completely smitten with the star — or at least with the con artist impersonating her. He was convinced he was in a romantic relationship with Bliss, leading him to give up about $1 million in retirement savings (and his granddaughter’s college fund) to the impostor and a varied cast of online fraudsters he interacted with over several years.

When Mancinelli tried to intervene, moving his father’s last $100,000 to a safe account, Alfred sued him — his loyalty was to “Lexi”.

“There was nothing we could do to convince him,” said Mancinelli, 47, a chemical engineer in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. An elder care specialist deemed Alfred “really sharp”, he said, but lacking purpose.

Mancinelli and others who have tried to awaken their loved ones from this trance often feel powerless, even after they’ve done everything to shatter the fiction and protect their assets. They say it’s as if their parent had been brainwashed into a cult.

In some ways, they were: These victims were slowly groomed by con artists posing as love interests, investment advisers or government officials, among others. Once ensconced inside this bubble, they are unable or unwilling to acknowledge that they have become victims. Even when their own children are warning them of the con.

“Romance scams are the most pernicious,” said Darius Kingsley, head of consumer banking practices at JPMorgan Chase. Some victims have become confrontational after being told that their wires were not going to lovers but were being used for nefarious purposes.

“They don’t believe it,” Kingsley added, which means banks may need to shut down their accounts if the behaviour continues.

Americans lost an estimated $12.5 billion to online criminals in 2023, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, including $652 million in losses tied to romance and confidence scams. Many more go unreported.

Technology has put just about everyone in scammers’ crosshairs, but older Americans are disproportionately targeted for some of the costliest cons, often because they are perceived to have more money, to have less familiarity with technology and to be potentially experiencing cognitive decline. Still, fully competent people fall for scams, too.

“For many people, what is going on is they are looking to fulfil an unmet need for companionship, an unmet need for financial security, an unmet need for a purpose,” said Marti DeLiema, an interdisciplinary gerontologist and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work, who researches financial fraud and exploitation.

Victims are often caught up in fantasies created by perpetrators, isolating them from their real-life existence and families.

That’s what happened with Alfred Mancinelli, who had already endured tragic losses in his life. He and his wife lost their first child to leukaemia when she was three; then, he lost his wife when their boys were nine and 14, raising them largely on his own. Later, he was forced into early retirement from his position as an electronic technician for Con Ed, the New York power company.

Chris Mancinelli said his father had “opened his heart” with some of his scammers, which may have played into how he was manipulated.

Before the Alexa Bliss impostor, Alfred sent money to someone called “Kate”, who said she had a sick four-year-old daughter. He also sent money to “Anna”, who was helping a friend caring for unwell children.

“I believe they crafted stories that pulled on those heart strings,” Mancinelli said.

Alfred’s involvement in scams dated back to 2018, but worsened during the isolating days of the pandemic. By the spring of 2021, his once $900,000 nest egg had dropped to $128,000. Mancinelli estimates that most of his father’s money went to one or more Alexa Bliss impostors — her persona is frequently used in scams — and what seemed to be a satellite of associates.

His chat messages with the sham Alexa read like a soap opera. There were the battles with his son, whom he disowned, after Mancinelli tried to safeguard his money; other “evil” meddlers trying to spoil their relationship; and ongoing references to Vince McMahon, the former wrestling promoter, whom the fake Alexa accused of humiliating her after she refused his advances. But Alfred was always there, ready to extend emotional and financial support.

The Alexa impersonator often claimed to be hospitalised for bad menstrual periods, and would plead with Alfred to send money so the hospital could begin treating her. “Tell me how much do you have left baby,” the impostor said in a chat.

Though the scammers refused to chat with Alfred using audio or video, they occasionally reached through the screen, sending him trinkets in the mail and even pizza delivery for his birthday.

Mancinelli sought help from an elder care manager and a therapist, and he cleaned up his father’s Google account (which was connected to two devices with Nigerian IP addresses). He set up a trust and a financial plan to help his father manage his expenses.

When that didn’t go far enough, he pursued the nuclear option — he took away his father’s last $100,000, putting it in another account.

Blocked from sending money to a purportedly ailing Alexa, Alfred became enraged. That was when he sued his son, in February 2023. He wanted his money back, plus interest and legal fees.

At that point, Mancinelli asked himself: “Why am I in federal court trying to help my dad? Why don’t I just let it go to zero?”

A month after he returned the money, it was gone.

“If he didn’t pass, he would have kept going,” said Mancinelli, who found documents indicating that his father may have been getting ready to sell his home. His father had also taken out personal loans using his car and televisions as collateral.

The fraudsters knew so much about Alfred that they also began to target his family: Mancinelli was threatened, he said, but scammers also sent his youngest granddaughter photos of Alfred, demanding gift cards.

“The girls all knew that their grandpa was getting scammed,” Mancinelli added, “so they were already on alert for suspicious activity”.

Though Alfred passed cognitive tests, he had become a little more reclusive, his son said. There were also some minor car accidents that he didn’t want to talk about.

“It’s really hard for us to accept that there was not some unseen mental decline,” Mancinelli said, “since the behaviour seemed so out of character with the man we knew growing up.”

Older people may also be more susceptible to the mind games that scammers are so adept at playing — using fear, creating a sense of urgency or even stirring up excitement over the prospects of a new romance or investment opportunity.

The goal is to tip victims into a heightened state of emotion where they are no longer thinking rationally but reacting to those appeals, researchers at the Stanford Center on Longevity, the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and the AARP Fraud Watch Network found.

“They are looking for the victim’s emotional Achilles’ heel,” said Doug Shadel, managing director for Fraud Prevention Strategies, a consulting firm in Seattle, and a former state director for AARP Washington.

Back in March, Nick J., a 38-year-old software engineer in New York, went to San Jose, California, to see his father for his 80th birthday. During his visit, he witnessed his father’s deep involvement with an investment scheme offered through a woman who claimed to be from South Korea. His father was up early one morning, laser-focused on real-time chats and charts tracking the gold spot market. The next day, Nick learned that the trading platform his father was using was a hoax.

“Everything was in motion, giving him the idea he was placing trades,” Nick said. “He was up at odd hours of the night and day because he was speaking with people in Asia.”

His father was convinced his account had grown to $5 million. But the next day, he couldn’t pull any of his money out. (To protect his father’s identity, The New York Times is using only Nick’s first name.)

In the end, his father wired away nearly all of his savings as well as some borrowed money — close to $1 million.

That included $250,000 from a home equity line of credit, something his wife was shocked to discover while casually checking her bank accounts on her phone.

It had been drawn down a week or so before Nick’s visit.

“What is going on?” she recalled asking her husband. “And then he started to talk about this gold. I went absolutely crazy.”

Nick’s 74-year-old mother was also incensed that Bank of America hadn’t notified her before the entire line — which had long been inactive — was drained all at once.

William Halldin, a spokesman for the bank, said those credit lines worked like any other joint account, which means any authorised user can transact without the other account holder’s permission.

Nick’s mother went to the bank, but it declined her request for reimbursement. She also filed a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The scheme had begun with a message on WhatsApp, in 2023, from Aina, the woman who claimed to be from South Korea.

After Nick’s father developed a romantic connection with her, Aina put him in contact with another woman, Meave, who claimed to be her friend and investment adviser in Hong Kong.

Aina shared many details about her life — a former husband who gambled their money away, a young son to support. Eventually, she explained her connection to the gold market.

Nick’s father was led to believe that he was investing in an account set up by Meave. Meave also claimed that she had a connection to a prominent research analyst at Bank of America who would provide real-time advice for a 10 per cent commission — which had to be paid with new money, not with gains that Nick’s father had supposedly logged.

(A Bank of America spokesman said research analysts do not serve individual investors.)

By the end of March, Nick’s father believed that his investment had grown to $5 million, and was advised to reinvest most of it, which, of course, he inevitably lost.

“Every trade I made was with my own hand,” his father said in an interview. “I lost the whole lot.”

A friend in the FBI told Nick’s father to stop sending Aina and her adviser money, which he did. But by that time, there was little left. He still maintains that the woman and their connection were real.

His wife said she believed that he clung to the idea that the money was recoverable because he wanted it to be — even needed it to be. “He was giving himself hope.”

His relationship with Nick and his other son remains fractured.

Chris Mancinelli never had the opportunity to reconcile with his father, Alfred, who died after he failed to recover from the neck surgery he needed after a fall.

“He lost all his money, his family relationships and was constantly stressed through it trying to get more and more money for them,” Mancinelli said. “I loved him. I wanted a close relationship with him, but it ruined it.”

New York Times News Service