Posted by scapbi 12/22/2025
Ask HN: My mother was scammed out of all her savings. What should I do?
My mother received a call from a scammer. They told her she needed to process some tax issue and prove that her bank account had enough money. In just a few minutes, they tricked her and manipulated her into entering banking OTP codes. All of her savings are now gone.
What makes this more dramatic is that last year I architected and helped a government department in my country build a big system. This system can track money flows across the whole country, to know where money comes from. I was very proud of this. It is the biggest achievement of my life. Even if nobody knows I built it, that was fine.
But now I cannot protect my own mother. I cannot protect my family. My system can track the money, but it is almost impossible to get it back.
When I went to the police, just in one small area, there were more than 20 cases in a single day. A hardworking student sent all their family's money, thinking it was for university fees or going abroad. An old factory worker lost all her retirement savings. So many people lost everything. That is when I realized that the system I built, the system I was proud of, is not enough.
All my own savings are gone too. (My mother was scammed into borrowing a lot of money and sending it to the scammers, and now it is my responsibility.) I had plans for the next few years: to do open source work, to write books about math and programming, to create a dream Go web framework, to give back to the community. Now all of that is gone.
But this is not only about me. I can still start over. I am strong enough to rebuild my life. But who will protect people like my mother? Or a poor student? Or a factory worker? Or so many others?
I can build systems. I can build distributed systems that scale to a whole country. But for what? What should I do?
I have been reading Hacker News for 12 to 13 years, sometimes posting from other accounts. I am writing here now to ask for advice and help from this community.
If anyone has experience with similar cases, or ideas on what can realistically be done, or even advice on how to move forward after something like this, I would really appreciate it. I will keep this account semi-private, because with the details above, I think some engineers from my country may recognize me.
This may not help, but you have my utmost sympathy. An elderly lady that I know recently lost her husband and her only son, and got scammed out of much of her savings by people exploiting her horrible circumstances. She had to come out of retirement and go back to work because of it.
I think crimes like this are among the most evil you can commit to people. I really wish that law enforcement organizations would chase these down and prosecute as aggressively as they would if there had been a murder or something committed. They are fully capable of doing so when it's something that they care enough about, but they just don't seem to care about people like your mother and my friend. It breaks my heart and I really wish I could do something about it as well.
I would have that setup for my parents so that if they ever called me for the 2nd code, I could ask questions about why they need it.
While I’m not too worried about my 83 year old mom, she is more tech savvy than most and has been using computers since 1986, I do worry about my dad if my mom passes first. He’s a lot more gullible.
This might not be sufficient. We need 4FA or, better, 5FA.
No affiliation other than using their products:
I would look into solutions that would make it harder for them. Like AI chatbots that act like targets, both text and voice. If the majority of their efforts end up being weeks of conversation with an AI before they figure it out then it will not be worth the effort.
Right now it may take them hours to find a viable target then days to extort them. Make it take longer, until it is more lucrative to get a legitimate job.
I used to think it was fun to mess with scammers... but I think these days many of them are forced into it. Basically they are lured in with reasonable sounding job offers then once they find themselves in another country with only their "employer" look out for them, they basically become slave labor.
You need to hurt the ones trapping the slaves that run the scams, and your weapon is the same as theirs... technology.
November 1st I received an email that I had been hacked and all private data including a video of me was owned. I got really emotional but then after reading it, I saw it was a generic threat and nothing could be done.
You are asking, what can be done? Start with the basics, strong password and MFA everywhere. Avoided pirated Windows, and if you can avoid the OS entirely as well. Basic cybersecurity awareness need to be taught in schools. After 23andme, a lot of companies just have very shitty practices as well.
The following is very naive...
I have no experience in this, but since you're working in the banking system, you may know someone who knows someone etc ? It may go high enough that "something" happens, be it some help, or green light for a project to prevent scamming or anything really.
Where I live, banks have to control wire transfers, so for instance if someone wires money for "Brad Pit's kidney", the bank must prevent this. Actually it's a real case, and an undisclosed deal was made between the victim and the bank. Maybe there's something like this where you live?
Sorry to hear of your misfortune, but I am wondering why you didn't spot the scam before lending money to feed it.