Dementia sufferer loses almost $70k in tree-lopping scam

An 89-year-old woman has told A Current Affair of her anger after she was conned into handing over tens of thousands of dollars in a tree pruning scam.

Joyce Pascoe was targeted by a door-to-door salesperson who offered to prune her trees, but, it seems, at a premium.

"This is a deliberate attempt to defraud mum," Joyce's son Mark told A Current Affair reporter Pippa Bradshaw.

"I just think it's very unfair for her that she's had to lose such a large amount of money at this age."

Earlier this year Joyce was diagnosed with dementia, but not before she handed over almost $70,000 for various tree pruning jobs.

"Went through all her paperwork and got copies of her bank statements, her cheque butts and just some random pieces of paper floating around and they had no names, phone numbers," Marks said.

Over a year Joyce wrote 19 cheques. The smallest was for $1500 while the largest was for more than $8000.

"Towards the end there was cheques issued on a Friday, Saturday, a Sunday and a Monday," he said.

All up, Joyce paid out $69,469 for very little work to actually be done.

"I don't know how they persuaded Mum to do that, there's no paperwork, there's no business cards, there's no invoices, there's nothing like that," Mark said.

Joyce said the whole incident has made her angry, adding, "Maybe I'm naive, I don't know, but the thing is I haven't got a chainsaw and wouldn't know how to handle it if I got the thing."

Mark believes Joyce's dementia made her vulnerable.

"The most noticeable thing about her dementia at the moment would be her short term memory loss."

He has reported it to police but as Joyce can't recall the names of the men involved, has no other details for them and willingly handed over the cheques, there's little detectives can do.

"I think the words, fraud, deception and inducement are all words that cover this situation," he told A Current Affair.

CEO of Age and Disability Advocacy Australia, Geoff Rowe, says reports of elder abuse like Joyce's case are increasing and says people shouldn't be ashamed to report it to authorities.

"There are people out there who can help, who want to help, and it isn't something that people should sit in silence," he said.