Not real long ago I was given a 16 year old Dell laptop by a woman in my apartments to see if I could do anything with it. For as old as it is I did pretty well getting it going with Windows 10 and switching out the original 140GB drive with a 640GB I had laying around but, of course, being 16 years old it is slow.

This woman is extremely nice. In fact too nice for her own good. Thinking about things it ended up striking as odd that she had this old Dell as I sort of remembered her buying an Asus laptop a couple of years ago so I asked her about it.

Now enter a guy that used to live here that recognized this lady as an easy mark and took a lot of advantage. Even though he was eventually evicted he still hangs around her still taking advantage. From the start I tried to warn her off this guy but she is so naive that he could basically make her do anything he wanted. He convinced her to trade her newer Asus for this 16 year old Dell. He used two things to convince her.
1) Since the Dell is a lot thicker it must have a lot more in it.

2) The Asus does not have an optical drive while the Dell does. She was getting ready to buy a printer and he convinced her that she would not be able to install the printer without having an optical drive.

I detest people like this! I also pity people like her. Oh, this guy is also getting money off her all the time and has yet to pay back even a penny. Nothing that I can really do but I'd like to throttle the jerk!!!

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Some people really do suck...

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Ya, they do, Steve.

He lived in the unit right next to me and would come over knocking on my door asking for computer help which, at first, I didn't mind. For instance he could not even copy a file from one folder to another. I'd do it for him and have him watch what I did. After a few times of this I told him something like "look, take notes so you can learn and do this stuff on your own.". His response was something like "I don't want to know how and don't need to know. I just want you to do it for me.". Gave me a quick insight as to what he was about. Bottom line is that he is a self centered, egotistical jerk that has severe entitlement issues.

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Jay, I don't blame you. I would probably be spitting dimes. I detest people like him.

If you haven't already, you might consider sitting down with her and reviewing the wrong points the jerk made to her about the Asus versus Dell.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

I've tried but he has her so much under his thumb she won' hear.

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To give further insight on this guy...

He claimed to have been a medic for special forces in the military. He also claimed that his patrol was ambushed and most of the group was injured and down. Claims to have taken down the entire enemy patrol single handed taking a deep knife wound to his stomach to where he had to hold in his intestines. Saw him without a shirt and there was no scar...

LOL! A lot of people in the apartments called him Neil Diamond behind his back. He claimed that in the past he did high dollar Vegas shows impersonating Diamond. Now I can't carry a tune in a bushel basket so will admit that he had a better voice than myself. Still he was no way a Neil Diamond impersonator.

Oh, then he was an electrical engineer and decided to rewire the wall outlets in his apartment. This was one of the things that led to his eviction. He partially blew the power in both apartments below him... we were on the third floor. Well didn't destroy power but blew something that made it necessary to reset the main breaker in the other apartments or something like that, not really sure on the exacts.

Actually thinking of these things has partially removed my anger as the man has definite issues and needs help. Sadly the VA here is the perfect for this help as it is a rehab and mental health facility but he refuses to see where he has any issue. Everything is the fault of others. Personally I think he has either an extreme superiority or inferiority issue (not really sure which would actually fit) along with some paranoia.

Sorry to go on about this but I'm really miffed.

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Some women do love a bad boy and when the bad boys get their hooks into some women it's incredibly hard to convince them they are being taken advantage of, the romance scammers are a prime example of that.

It sounds like he's on that level... there won't be much you can do about that if he has got his hooks into her, other than being there for her to explain what happened to her when her bank account has been emptied.

Jay, you didn't mention whether he was taking money from this lady but i'd bet he is.

Edit: You did say he was taking money from her in your original post, i missed that. Question now is, how much and will it ever stop?

I don't know exact amounts but I believe it to bee at least a few grand.

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That's so sad to hear, sadly it won't stop until her bank account is emptied.

I know because i've had a childhood friend lose over £30,000 who was in complete denial she was being scammed, my sister asked me a year or so ago how she could have given away such an amount and even my sister was like wtf when i told her.

For obvious reasons i was limited in what i could say to my sister but as soon as she told me, i knew it was a scam.
I had no idea it had been ongoing for as long as it did.

That friend lost all of her pension savings and it makes my blood boil, she's just retired without any pension savings at all now.