Retired couple who had $600k stolen in tech scam: 'Some storms clear a path'
"Not all storms come into your life to create chaos. Some storms come into your life to clear the path." -- Diane Clemens
One of the great privileges of being a journalist is the opportunity to meet people at critical times in their lives -- when there's a terrible tragedy, or a great victory, or a shocking development. As host of The Perfect Scam, I usually talk with people at a real low point: They've recently discovered the "love" of their life has stolen their life savings, or that an "IRS agent" was really an imposter, or that last-ditch cancer treatment was really a fraud. These moments are horrifying, but occasionally, they are also clarifying. I am constantly in awe of the courage people show by telling me their story, in all its gory detail, all in the hope that someone else might avoid their terrible fate. It's an incredible gift; a rare act of selflessness. And occasionally, one surprising benefit for the victim is the emergence of real, deep wisdom.
That's what I found talking with Tom and Dianne Clemens recently. They're a retired couple outside St. Louis, both former professors, who spent decades "serving" young adults -- their word. A few years ago, right after retirement, Diane was diagnosed with breast cancer. Aggressive treatment gave life back to her, and then the couple seemed to enjoy the forced isolation of Covid-19. Tom picked up the fiddle; Diane caught up on shows and "Facetimed" with their daughter and grandchild in San Diego. Then one day, their computer was attacked. It started making a horrible noise, not unlike a fire alarm that makes you want to run out of a building. Diane called the number on the screen and was told the couple's bank accounts were at risk. Thus began an odyssey that resulted in six or seven calls a day from "consultants," all coaching the couple on how to "protect" their money. That was interrupted by the awful news that Diane's cancer had returned.
Within a few weeks, Tom and Diane found themselves in a parking lot, handing over boxes of $30,000 or $40,000 to people they thought were experts who worked for bank security.
By the time the nightmare was over, all $600,000 the couple had saved for retirement -- two lifetimes full of labor -- had been stolen.
And yet, facing all that, both Diane and Tom shared so many beautiful moments with me -- so much wisdom that I feel lucky to have met them. And their daughter, Erika, herself a giver -- she works at a newborn intensive care unit -- was so supportive and loving to both of them, you'll really cheat yourself if you don't listen to her. She spends her life helping families in the most tense situation possible, so she is up to the task. "You can't bullshit a baby," she told me. Our conversation is full of lovely nuggets like that.
It was Diane who told me she's hanging onto the mantra: "Some storms come into your life to clear the path." The couple still has a modest pension. So they will survive this crime. They have to cut out many of their plans -- trips, home improvements, dinners with friends. But they'll make it. After all, Diane's health takes top priority now. And thanks to a summer spent with their 6-year-old grandson, they're really too busy to do anything but live in the moment.
Click here or click play below to listen to episode 1 and then episode 2. There’s a partial transcript below
00:34:39] Dianne Clemens: People don't know how to deal with difficult subjects. And money is a big one. I thought cancer was a big one. But money is even a bigger one. I don't know if people thought that we were going to ask them for money or whatever, but we wrote all of our friends and said, this is what's happened. We don't want your pity, we just need your support, we just need your understanding, we're not going to be able to do the things, because this was our discretionary money, so we're not going to be able to do the things maybe with you that we used to do. We can't go on the vacations and those kinds of things that we used to because this is, that was the money we used for that. But we'll be okay. But just stand by us. We never heard from a lot of those people. Never heard a word. So it's their uncomfortableness, I'm assuming, but it can also be interpreted to me as indifference or lack of caring. But I really believe they just are inept in what to say.
[00:35:37] Bob: So what could friends say that would be more helpful?
[00:35:42] Dianne Clemens: The point that I would really like to make is that if you know somebody who has been scammed, and if they are strong enough, brave enough to talk with you about it, listen. Just listen to them. And don't make a lot of comments. The type of things people say to us is, "Oh, you'll just bounce back from this." "Oh, I'll bet you'll get all your money back." "You're so strong, Dianne, you can handle anything." Not helpful. What would be helpful if you're talking to somebody who has been scammed or has gone through any big loss or any big catastrophic life change, is just to say things like, "It must be difficult." "I support you." "Anything I can do to support you or help you?" "I don't know what to say, it sounds so horrific what you have gone through. Anything I say would be trite, but know that I care." Those are helpful statements. We have found only a few people in our life that can handle that.
[00:37:08] Bob: Dianne is still working on her physical health, but her emotional health is much better.
[00:37:14] Dianne Clemens: You have a choice, and you have to pull it together. You know, you just have to go put one foot forward. The best thing we did is to talk, start talking about it. Our daughter encouraged us to not be secret about it. And if you have been scammed, you need to talk to people about it. It's ideal if you talk to people before, while you're being scammed or while, if, if you have a question, this is something I think that if somebody told once that is good. If you think you're being scammed, you probably are. And so we had our doubts, but we didn't talk to people about it, we didn't even tell our children. And so we thought we were handling it correctly. So talk if you have a question, but if you do get scammed, talk to people about it, because I realized I was not going to let this have hold and power over me for the rest of my life. And the only way I could let go of their control was to talk about it.
[00:38:11] Bob: Erika reminded me that it's also important to understand that people deal with trauma in different ways.
[00:38:19] Erika Clemens: I think I mentioned before how, you know, my dad, you know, still waters run deep in my dad. He was working on stuff deep down, and he just wasn't verbal about it. My mom, my mom and I take more after my mom, but we can be very verbose, you know, and, and we can express our emotions and we're not afraid to do so. And probably towards the end of my two weeks when I was home, my dad said at some point when asked how he was doing, and before this he was just, you know, brushing everything off essentially, he said, "You know, I can finally look in the mirror to shave. I can finally look in the mirror and shave without internally just screaming at myself the whole time." So he's like, "So I guess maybe I'm, I'm getting there. I'm a little better." And so I would say that to be mindful of those that have been through something, but they aren't as (sigh) able to express um, what they need or the support they need, or just being there. I think just being there. Just know that you're there to support. I think that would be helpful.
[00:39:27] Bob: Healing is, of course, a process.
[00:39:31] Erika Clemens: Ironically, I think a big part of this from the emotional state that the scam left her in, I think the cancer, the metastatic cancer diagnosis woke her up, kind of like it woke all of us up. Of course it's ironic how, you know, if you lose a bunch of money, people say, well at least you have your health. Well, we don't, you know, we don't have that in our case. But what we have is like the here and now. We have the time we have right now. We have the present. And so we are riding this wave of ambiguity. We don't know, you know, what the future holds for us, but we are, we are living it up. My mom exercises most days of the week. And she's like, "Well I feel like I'm exercising for my life, you know, I need to do this." And my mom wants to live. And we talk about life and death issues, and that can be hard for people. My mom says, "I'm not ready to die yet. I want to live, and I feel like I have a few years in me that I want to live. So I'm going to do everything in my power, be it exercise, be it just a mindful, mind-clearing meditation, be it just making an intention that I'm not going to let this scam ruin the rest of my life." And she says, she said many times, she's like, "I'm not going to let this scam define me and the rest of my life."
[00:40:53] Bob: Dianne, as it seems she always does, has found a way to look on the bright side.
[00:41:01] Bob: So where are things today?
[00:41:05] Dianne Clemens: We’re alive, we're doing just fine. So um, let me say, we have a pension, we do not have um, all of our discretionary money. We were in the middle of a home remodeling, and so we had a garage full of lumber, windows, and doors. And suddenly we're unable to pay for the contractor to do the work with it all. It's still there. And we're pecking away at it, Tom himself working on this a little bit at a time to try to work on this home project, but it'll take a long time. We, early on, liked this phrase, it is "Not all storms come into your life to create chaos. Some storms come into your life to clear the path." And I like that, and that sustains me. So I am thinking that our path needed to be cleared. It was a helluva way to go through the process.