An eighty-one year lady from Missouri just pled guilty to unwittingly helping her catfish-love-interest perpetrate several frauds while also losing her life savings. One would like to think that people know enough not to send money to Nigeria, however people get old and things fall apart.

How can one pre-empt / unfacilitate these transactions? Just as one can freeze their credit, it would be great to be able to prevent both (a) new financial account openings, and (b) any structured transactions.

For (b), while a trust can feed income to an account, transaction reporting depends on the abilities of the financial institution used. All banks and credit unions support a bare minimum of SARs with reporting to a Trusted Contact Person, however actual support will vary.

(a) is still not feasible. ¹

The best solution is still just to go back to 1985, and open a passbook savings account where all transactions are processed by Janice. ²