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.
The thing you can do right now is to try and get hold of someone in the bank that can freeze the flows, for the possibility of returning the money. Otherwise, not much can be done.
Let me give a concrete example. When money is transferred to scammer accounts, it is immediately distributed across hundreds of other accounts and moved out of the electronic system in under 30 seconds. At that point, everything is gone.
How did the money actually leave her account once they had access? Was it wired?
Unfortunately the solution for you right now is to focus on rebuilding and acceptance. This is a massive problem, you aren't alone, and it's a reminder that there are shitty people in this world. There needs to be an alert and approval mechanism for outbound wires that older people can be strongly encouraged to set up. Sons and daughters can be notified if there's a massive outbound wire pending and intervene -- scammers are often posing as these people.
OP is not in the U.S.
Truth be told that scamming is becoming easier and easier. The problem is that most countries not only allow it, it is part of their GDP. Look at the number of scammers that originate in India. Everyone there knows who they are, there are numerous YouTube channels souly dedicated to exposing them and reporting them to the authorities, yet they still remain active.
Until a more brutal and direct response is used, these organizations and countries will continue to operate. If the attacks Trump has used on drug boats has taught us anything is that a direct response is the best response when dealing with the underworld.
People talk about changing laws or technical solutions, but the inconvenient truth is that technically literate people should peer-pressure nearby friends/family/etc. into being more aware of such possibilities. I've done so, to the extent that some people find it ether borderline schizophrenic/paranoid (to my "luck", I live in an ex-communist country, where most people are usually skeptical in many contexts with strangers; so this group of people is relatively small).
People who know better bear a responsibility towards helping others who don't; towards those who are too kind (or naive) for their own good; Even though I'm the "tech guy" in my close circles (family, friends,etc.) like many here, I often do the >opposite< of what other "pro-technologists" do these days: I don't encourage people, especially the older generation OR the more tech-illiterate ones to use more technology, because it is obvious that doing so "injects" another vector of attacks into their lives. More often these days this is not possible, everything gets digitalized to the detriment of such groups, but this also delves into the politics of keeping "older options" (cash, paper trails, etc.) available even if digitalization happens. Often times the older options are more secure, though obviously less convenient.
This is a non-solution, yes, but it is the correct way to approach this (imo), as more and more places LEGALLY force digitalization of different institutions(banking, gov. agencies, etc.) which inherently either add, or worse, completely shift the risk into virtual spaces. This is why a "legal" solution is more often than not either a slow one or a completely pointless one. It will always be an arms-race between scammers(which operate more effectively[in theory] due to their decentralized nature) and the gov./banks/etc., which operate in a more centralized fashion, thus demanding and imposing more control above all included parties. A legal way will always demand more than it's worth.
I digress from my shift into politics, but bottom line is this: don't let your peers/family/closed ones get into these situations. If you have "an authoritative" voice regarding tech, use it to first cultivate awareness regarding dangers, before cultivating hype/or anything else. (Obviously not talking about anyone specifically, but the whole "geeksphere" as a whole)
Good luck to you and your family.