I know this is a crazy idea but...

Maybe have your dad ask his partner of 20+ years what she is up to?

Must be a hoot of a relationship where he has no idea what she presumably spends tons of time and money doing and is so afraid of her to even ask.

I wouldn't have any problem taking a stranger's money fair and square even if I knew it was his/her last dollar. If he/she is at the table someone is going to get it, so it might as well be me.

Away from the table, I would be willing to put considerable time and effort into helping that same person if they wanted help.

I don't see any indication that yimyammer's dad's girlfriend wants to be helped.

Yup.

Good read but I’m conflicted.
Much like the poster above, part of me wants to ask, rather than you taking counsel from randoms on the internet, can they not simply have a deeper conversation about it? You’ve said she has admitted knowingly spending the money. If they’re both switched on lucid adults as you say that have spent 20 plus years together and can’t have a constructive discussion about this and work it out between themselves or together in conjunction with others their problems are far greater than anything described here.

But another part of me thinks this is perhaps all a weird troll attempt, especially after some of your replies to captain. And in OP did you really try and stipulate how much “she should be spending a month”?
If this is indeed the case, I’d like to offer one potential unexpected silver lining resulting from the thread. Perhaps stepmom really is a piece of work and is paying off some deep web type characters on layaway to rid herself of a pesky son in law. You don’t wanna have to explain the abnormally large lump sum withdrawal, so she’s been smart there. But you’ve actually stumbled upon evidence of your own demise which can later be used at trial to bring her to justice

American culture raises kids to always see their parents as "above them" and not as equals. When kids eventually grow up, they feel like they can't correct their parents bad decision making, or that they aren't allowed to tell their parents "You're wrong." That's what I see in the OP's deflection issues everytime the extremely logical point of having a sit down discussion with dad & 72-y/o GF about this real & terrible situation that's happening. I went through a much smaller scale situation where my mom let some internet dating site con man swindle her out of 10k of her retirement money to buy "bitcoin mining machines". After breaking down to her what a stupid idea this was, how she was clearly being scammed, breaking down the figures of how a 10k investment in mining equipment cannot possibly return a positive ROI, and how she immediately needs to lose contact with this conman her only response was to look at me with a straight face and say, "You should talk to your mother with more respect! I'm not an idiot". At this point I knew she was fully delusional, there's nothing I could do to help the situation, and taking on that burden of guilt over a monetary sum that isn't coming back (which never belonged to me in the first place) is a stress that I don't need in my life.

People are people and are always going to make bad decisions from time to time. Financial burdens are the worst stress there is next to terminal illness of a loved one. If they aren't tripping about it, I wouldn't ruin my life being upset about it no matter how ridiculous it may be. This reminds me of the internet dating site hoaxes where a young "woman" befriends an old senior citizen and gets him to wire all his money over the course of months/years in this online relationship with promises of love and finally being together. But when the guy wires the thousands of dollars for a flight overseas to meet and situations keep arising that require more money, "I missed my flight", "got kidnapped by cartel", "taxi broke down on the way to the airport, need more money", "Passpport was stolen, need more money for an expedited one". Deep down, the poor, lonely old man knows he's being scammed, but it's the only thing he has going on in his life that makes him feel alive again.

It's amazing how many old people willingly left themselves be scammed out of pure boredom.

thats the direction I suggested and suspect it will eventually go, like others have noticed, they apparently have an odd relationship where my dad seems hesitant to just skip the BS and have a direct convo about everything

This chicks is damaged, tell your dad to move on. She might as well have a crippling heroin problem imo. Tell her to get help.


I'd be more worried about your dad, what's so ****ed about him that leads him to this type of woman. If there is 1 broken person in a relationship than most likely both are.

damn, sorry to hear that about your mother, hopefully she's stopped bleeding $$

Did you read any of what was written? They've been in a relationship for 20 yrs, telling his dad to leave her is really terrible advice. The woman is a retired accountant that OP describes as "lucid, sharp, and knows what she's doing"

OP suspects she spent 200k gambling or playing online games. He does not know that. He only knows that a sharp retired accountant is spending approximately 100k per year but he doesn't know what she could possibly be paying for other than gambling. Hint: shoes, hair, nails, makeup, g string for her latin lover, travel, gifts, flowers, bday gifts for ungrateful stepson, bitcoin via coinbase, etc..

The only things we really know are that a retired accountant is spending approximately 100k per year (including an unknown amount on gaming) and OP is pissed that his parents are burning thru his inheritance.

oh no u didn't!

Damn, when was the BTC scam? If it was 7-8 years ago she could have been rich!

It was LOL-November 2017.

No bank or credit card company should be discussing a customer’s account with a third party. Doesn’t mean it is impossible but it certainly should not happen.

Since none of these appear to be joint accounts, they should not share any information with the op or his dad.

This. I have no internet sleuthing skills but a cursory google brings up all sorts of scam charges posts, few if any of which seem to mention any kind of online gambling. It's more "hey someone got my account info and posted this bogus charge". She may associate the charges with online gambling but it isn't necessarily the case that it's a facebook gaming site making the charges. The dollar amount may also be an indication as it's possible that it's just under $0.01 what the financial institution would flag.

Dunno what her chances of recovery are but at least the bleeding should be easy enough to stop.

Yimmer, I probably missed something, but can you clarify this?
Was your dad paying her credit card bills with his money?
Or has he been using her money to pay off those bills?
Joint account?
Either way, if hes paying the bills how did he not notice $8K+ per month in payments for at least the past 2 years, especially knowing she has no real expenses?

No, she has her own CC and pays her credit card bill. He pays all other expenses from a joint account but she doesn't contribute any $$ here or elsewhere, he pays for everything. He would NEVER pay for these charges beyond the first month & it would have never gotten past the first month had it been on his CC.

If he hadn't stumbled across the charges, he wouldn't know it was going on. From my original post:

Except that OP provided a screenshot of the charges and its quite obviously not any of that stuff


This seems like a bad take.
1) Not his "parents"
2) his dad's GF's money is not related to his inheritance, so unless his dad is paying off that 200K with his own money, thats a non-issue.
*GF pays it with her account, so it's a non-issue
3) why can't OP be legitimately concerned about the woman and his dad without any personal gain?
4) sounds like the dad came to OP asking for help, and OP hasn't really done anything "wrong" imo.

That said, I have no idea why the dad hasn't just directly asked her where the $200K went. I mean, wtf? Dad needs to just tell her he saw the credit statement and that he's concerned.
If the charges are fraudulent, then having that uncomfortable conversation about snooping is really nothing in comparison. Even if the charges are legit, its still nothing!


* EDIT
ok just saw yimmer's reply above.
So this obv has nothing to do with any possible inheritance

Thread should be changed to... spent 200k on facebook games.

Real talk: How can I find hot 72 year olds willing to drop $100k/ year on me? Tia.

Maybe we need a Ms. OOT GILF thread.

Nah. You're way overthinking this.

The lady spent $200K+ on Facebook games.

OP doesn't want to believe it. That doesn't change the facts though.

Facebook policy is all charges end in .99 (maybe .49 as well, but Zuckerberg doesn't like integers for some reason)


0.01%

.

Wouldn't your dad know if she's playing online slots all day every day?

yes, he knew, she told him it was play money

lol, I dont care what it is and not married to any conclusion, I'm simply trying to find out what it is and I'm inclined to think you & others are right that its in-game purchases.

I hope we find out exactly what, how and where soon

At least she wasn't lying.

It is play money.

That she purchased with real money.