My parents divorced when I was in college after 23 years of marriage. A couple of years ago, my mom took to online dating. The first person she "met" scammed her out of a million dollars and then faked his own death. I put "met" in quotations because although they talked for nearly a year they never met face to face. Then she moved on to someone else that is doing the same thing. She's given him $400K over nearly two years without meeting him. The pattern seems to be they live in the same city but are currently "stuck" overseas and need money so they can get back to the states. Then it's one excuse after the other (none of which make any rational sense: hotel bills, have to pay taxes before they can leave the country, webcams broke so they can't video chat etc.)
I had her ask him to send his passport photo which is clearly fake. Despite all the evidence she refuses to accept it. One element of human nature I've learned quite well over the years is that when someone doesn't want to believe something it can be quite hard to convince them of it.
The entire family has worked tirelessly to get her to stop. Her mom even threatened to take her out of the will. Nothing seems to work. She lies to everyone about talking to him. The worst part is she is in her mid sixties and she is at the point physically where each successive year she loses talking to these people, her appearance wanes more and more.
I am at my wit's end on how to deal with this. I was wondering if anyone had gone through something similar with a family member and had any advice on how to approach her on this issue. Everything I know about situations like this tells me not to engage in controlling/rescuing behavior but it's easier said then done when it comes to people you love.