By the time Linda and Elizabeth Baer noticed something was wrong with their once-doting mother, it was too late to protect her from financial exploitation. 

“Dementia doesn’t look like people think it looks,” Elizabeth explains. “And technology has changed in such a way that people can gain control much more easily of someone’s finances.” 

The fallout was swift. 

What began as a trusting relationship with a neighbor took a turn into something much darker. A stranger living next door to their mother at her second home spent months befriending her, ultimately taking over her finances prior to the pandemic and selling off the family’s real estate assets. Their mother’s cognitive decline made it easier for her neighbor to take advantage of her financially, Linda and Elizabeth believe. 

The Baer sisters have spent years fighting in court, only to find that the legal system offers little recourse for families whose loved ones fall prey to financial exploitation while still appearing competent, especially when a person claims they are acting of their own accord.

“Some people with dementia can carry on like someone who doesn’t have any cognitive issues,” Elizabeth says. “And we really believe that our mother suffered from this, because we were a close and loving family. And, you know, for her to have fully cut ties from everyone she loved really stretches the bounds of credulity.”

“We believe our mother was manipulated into signing over both her assets and control of her life to a man younger than her [own] daughters,” Elizabeth adds.

The sisters believe that their mother signed over her financial assets to a stranger due to undiagnosed cognitive decline.

For Linda and Elizabeth, the loss has been both personal and financial. Their parents’ savings, built through generations and managed by their mother after their father passed away in 2014, were supposed to provide a cushion to Linda and Elizabeth as the sisters aged. Instead of high-paying careers, both went into public service work–Linda, 58, a public health professional, and Elizabeth, 61, a schoolteacher–envisioning stability well into old age. 

Now, as both look toward retirement, everything has changed. Linda, who lives outside of Boston, has continued working to save for her later years. Elizabeth, who lives in Lenox, Massachusetts, quit her full-time job due partly to the emotional fallout of what they have endured, but continues to tutor and work independently. 

As financial scams grow more sophisticated and widespread, families like the Baers are left to pick up the pieces. Fraud losses rose 33% between 2023 and 2024, according to FBI data, and older adults are particularly at risk for greater losses. Fraud robs households of more than their savings; it undermines the security, independence, and future they’ve often spent a lifetime building. For the Baer sisters, speaking out about their experience has become both a form of healing and of public service—helping  others dealing with the same devastation and calling for system-wide protections to combat the rapid rise of financial abuse.

It is important to note that cognitive decline is not the reason scams succeed in many cases. The growing sophistication of scams run by transnational crime syndicates rely on a playbook that bypasses logic entirely to force immediate action. This is referred to as the “amygdala hijack” and threatens the financial security of all demographics, particularly older adults who hold much of the wealth in the US, according to AARP.

For the Baer sisters, the growing challenges of achieving a secure retirement collided with the ease with which exploitation can happen in our current financial system. Their experience shows how fragile intergenerational financial security becomes when families aren’t protected by stronger systems.

Dementia-related financial losses often begin years before a formal diagnosis. “Before the Diagnosis: Dementia’s Early Financial Toll,” a report by AARP and the MIT AgeLab, shows that there are many ways that cognitive decline triggers wealth loss. For instance, missed payments, declining credit scores, and major drops in household net worth can happen well in advance of symptoms being recognized. 

For families like the Baers, these health changes can bring on financial strain, tipping them from long-term stability to financial insecurity well into their later years. Today, roughly 55% of working adults are concerned about being financially insecure in retirement, with one in four people who are at retirement age not having savings at all, according to Financial Health Network research. 

Linda, left, and Elizabeth look through family photos.

Financial Health Network research on intergenerational financial health also shows how families need tools to manage finances collaboratively, though only 20% of checking accounts allow people to add trusted contacts to enable safe monitoring of finances or spot potential fraud. Yet those solutions are only one piece of the puzzle: In the Baer sisters’ situation, Linda was suddenly removed as her mother’s trusted contact, which they suspect was due to pressure from her mother’s neighbor. Support systems like elder protection, affordable care, stronger paid family leave policies, and even more transparent financial tools are all essential elements for addressing financial abuse.

Currently, these financial losses limit economic mobility, slow asset building, and undermine generational wealth with consequences that ripple across families and the broader economy. Protecting older adults requires a coordinated cross-sector approach that includes social media, telecommunications, law enforcement, policymakers, and financial institutions. That means improving consumer and professional education  (including offering enhanced training for financial professionals through initiatives like AARP’s BankSafe), normalizing and making opportunities for early diagnosis and detection more accessible, and strengthening security practices to stay ahead of potential threats.

For Elizabeth and Linda, it’s too late. They are no longer able to get in touch with their mother, and they have no idea if they’ll be informed when she passes. The financial and emotional fallout that has forever altered the lives of these two sisters underscores the ways in which systems that are built on trust can falter unless better support structures are put into place.

View more of their story on AARP.org.

If you or someone you know may be experiencing elder exploitation or abuse, please consider connecting with the National Center on Elder Abuse.