Romance Scam Story - $5000.0 Lost

I (47) am posting this not to ask for advice, but because I think this might be useful for others who may be going through a similar thing and are feeling lost or alone. My dad is 72. My mom passed away about 8 years ago, and since then he’s been in a slow decline. More isolated, more lonely, and honestly more vulnerable. In 2020, after he was hospitalized, I moved him closer to me so I could help manage his health and finances. For a while, things were stable. We had a normal relationship. Movies, dinners, helping him get to appointments. Then the scams started. At first it was just those sketchy dating sites that charge per message. I actually read the terms and found they openly say you might be talking to paid actors or bots. I told him that. It didn’t matter. He still believed the people he was talking to were real, usually much younger women who seemed fascinated by him. Nothing ever came of those, but it never really stopped either. In 2023 everything escalated. I noticed he started juggling multiple scams at once. Romance scams, gift cards, fake sweepstakes, crypto, identity theft. It wasn’t just small amounts anymore. He was buying gift cards, sending Pay. Pal transfers, trying to figure out bitcoin. He bought plane tickets for a woman to come visit him. He booked a honeymoon suite for someone he had never met. He even tried to make one of these scammers the beneficiary on a life insurance policy. At one point, he gave scammers literally everything. Bank logins, card photos, personal ID. They logged in and drained his accounts while I was physically sitting in the room with him. The only reason they didn’t get everything is because they didn’t understand how to access his CDs. He also drained my disabled brother’s savings during this time. He even crashed a car we co-owned while on his way to "meet" one of these people. From just Sept–Dec 2023, we tracked over $5,000 lost. At this point, including everything (debt, missed rent, car damage) we’re well over $20,000. So in 2024, we tried to shut everything down. We changed his phone number, email, and bank accounts. Froze his credit. Locked down his phone so he can’t install apps without me approving it. I monitor his i. Cloud. Basically listed as a child on our phone/cloud services. We even started conservatorship paperwork (but never filed). But I’ll be honest, these were never hard locks. More like guardrails. Enough to make him think twice, not enough to completely take away his autonomy. It didn’t stop anything. As of now (2026), it’s still happening constantly. He’s usually talking to multiple scammers at the same time. Right now it’s at least 3 over text and 2 on Facebook Messenger. Over the last 6 years, it’s easily been 50+ different scammers. He still sends gift cards (over $2,500 just from Sept 2025 to April 2026). He responds to porn bots on social media, moves to Messenger, gives out his phone number. They try to get him onto apps like Whats. App or Signal, but those ar