Yes. It might also be worthwhile to contact your county Adult Protection folks to see if they have any ideas or tricks that will help.
At one point DW was vice-chair of our state's Board on Aging. The numbers they had said that 85% of elders are financially abused at some point. Sadly, the most frequent abusers were children and family. One of the problems with this, too, is that the abused elders are often too ashamed to admit what happened and do not seek help.
As you mention, my only course of action is to literally attempt to trick him.
Thus far I've gotten the following advice: (his PCP, hospital Dr, hospital social worker):
* "He's still making decisions, they're just bad decisions"
* "Move his accounts and hide them from him" (this was also suggested to me by the bank teller when he showed up to close his accts in a SS phone scam)
* "Even though he scored 2 points into the dementia threshold on the SLUMS test and am prescribing 2 dementia drugs, I'm not going to diagnose him with dementia"
From an Elder care lawyer re: getting him declared incompetent and being made his guardian: AFTER a person is declared incompetent:
* "as long as he has testamentary capacity, he can still revoke your POA"
* "can you move and hide his accounts?" after with the lawyer stated:
* "he can still claim ownership and control on any of his accounts he finds"
DF's also currently being exploited by a home health "aide" (HHA).
Sorry for venting and taking this off topic. As an engineer I'm wired to anticipate and prevent/avoid problems. But with this I'm only allowed to sit on the side and watch him play in the storm.