I’m writing this using a throwaway because I am absolutely losing my mind right now. I always thought my parents were financially savvy. My dad worked in corporate, and my mom always talked about wealth management, structured deposits, and how they were planning for a comfortable retirement.
Two days ago, I found out the devastating truth. It turns out my dad fell into a massive WhatsApp investment scam group promising 300% returns on a shady forex trading platform. He didn’t just lose their savings; he went to a bank behind my mom’s back and did a home equity loan / mortgage refinancing on their fully paid-off 5-room HDB flat.
He managed to get a massive property loan cash-out of $400,000. Within three months, the entire sum was completely wiped out. The scammers vanished, the website is down, and now my parents are saddled with a crushing monthly mortgage repayment that they absolutely cannot afford on their retirement payouts.
To make matters worse, my dad also maxed out three different credit cards and took a high-interest personal loan from a licensed moneylender to try and “win back” the losses. The total credit card debt is around $45,000.
When my mom finally found out, she collapsed and had to be rushed to the A&E due to severe chest pains. Thank goodness her private shield health insurance and critical illness insurance policy covered the emergency hospitalization, but the emotional damage is done. She is now threatening to see a divorce lawyer to protect whatever assets she has left, but our family friend who is a corporate attorney told us that since the home loan was tied to a joint-ownership property, it’s going to be an absolute nightmare to untangle the legal liabilities.
How does this affect me? My fiancée and I are supposed to collect our BTO keys next month and were in the middle of securing our own HDB bank loan. Because I foolishly signed as a guarantor for my dad’s smaller bridge loan a year ago (he told me it was just for business cash flow), my credit score has tanked. I’m terrified the bank will reject our home mortgage application, or give us a terrible interest rate, forcing us to forfeit our downpayment.
I’ve spent the last 48 hours looking into debt consolidation plans and checking if any insurance broker can offer advice on clawing back anything, but it looks bleak. I might have to liquidate my own stock trading portfolio and crypto to clear his personal loans so the banks don’t come after the flat.
Has anyone gone through this? Do I need a criminal defense lawyer, a family attorney, or a specialized financial consultant to deal with the bank’s foreclosure department? My wedding is ruined, my future housing is in jeopardy, and my family is completely broken. Don’t ever let your aging parents manage their own internet banking without supervision.