About Beware Mysterious Mark - A True Account of Elder Financial Abuse
It can happen to anyone. Your parent. Your partner. Your neighbour.
Beware Mysterious Mark is a ten-part audio documentary about elder financial abuse, built around one harrowing true account of how a predator isolated an elderly man from his family and systematically took control of his life and his assets. Names have been changed. Events and conversations are drawn directly from the family's own detailed records.
Told by storyteller Nancy Miles, whose partner Brooke watched her father taken piece by piece over seven years, the series weaves dramatized conversations re-enacted by actors with commentary from professionals who see these cases every day: an estate planning lawyer, a geriatrician, a capacity assessment specialist, and a researcher whose doctoral work focused on loneliness in older adults.
Together, they expose how undue influence actually works. How charm, patience, and calculated lies can turn a trusted new friend into a captor. How family members, doctors, police and financial institutions all try to help, and how often that help arrives too late. And most importantly, what warning signs to watch for, and what to do when you see them.
Elder financial abuse exists in every community. It is rarely a single phone scam. More often it is the slow, deliberate theft of everything a person has worked a lifetime to build. Better informed families, friends and neighbours can make a real difference.
Ten episodes. New episodes are released weekly.
Beware Mysterious Mark is a Radio Sidney production. This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's New Horizons for Seniors Program.
Show notes, episode transcripts and resources: themarkdoc.ca (http://themarkdoc.ca)
Contact: info@radiosidney.ca (mailto:info@radiosidney.ca)
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. In this special bonus episode of Beware Mysterious Mark, producer Bill Collins sits down with Dr. Josh Budlovsky, a Victoria geriatrician whose practice focuses on cognition and cognitive impairment in older adults. Their in-depth conversation covers how capacity is assessed, why aging can leave people more open to manipulation, and what families can do when something starts to feel wrong. Drawin...
20 Jul 2026
Expert Eric Partridge
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Loneliness is where the predator gets in. In this extended bonus conversation, Bill Collins sits down with Dr. Eric Partridge, a priest in the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia whose doctoral research examined the impact of gratitude practices on chronic loneliness in older adults. His interest began with a parishioner who was busy, involved, surrounded by people, and who told him that when sh...
2 Jul 2026
I Could Do Without Mark
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Mark and Donna have a second driveway carved through Poplar Hill's woods without permits or Brooke's signature. The municipality halts the work; Mark blames everyone but himself. Letters fly between lawyers, as Mark predicts that 'the laws of karma are far more powerful than those made by man.' One March morning in 2025, Brooke receives a phone call that changes everything. Mark Marshall is dead....
25 Jun 2026
Your Father's Bank Account Has About Nine Hundred Alerts!
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Bert's bank manager reveals that they have placed hundreds of fraud alerts on Bert's accounts to protect his assets from elder financial abuse. Mark has Bert buy a recreational vehicle for him, under the guise of emergency housing. Bert lies to Brooke about its ownership, then family friend Vicky discovers the truth. Brooke realizes the full architecture of Mark's strategy: create crises for Bert...
18 Jun 2026
I Cannot Put Words in Order Anymore
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. At a meeting with his psychiatrist, Bert says quietly: 'I cannot put words in the order anymore.' The cognitive decline is obvious. While the family struggles to process what's happening, Donna maneuvers her way onto the title of Poplar Hill, the Cooper family home of more than thirty years. A nurse confides that Bert's version of his family history bears no resemblance to reality. Bert's brainwa...
11 Jun 2026
Mr. Marshall, You're Not a Charity
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Psychiatrist Dr. Becker writes a single sentence on hospital letterhead that should change everything: Albert Cooper is incapable of financial decision-making. For a moment, Brooke and Nancy believe they've finally won. But Mark is already at work, convincing Bert that his daughter orchestrated the diagnosis to seize control of his money. Within weeks, Bert refuses to travel anywhere with Brooke,...
4 Jun 2026
Brooke, I Want You To Have This House
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Bert tells Brooke he wants her to have Poplar Hill, the family home her mother left her, and offers a deal: remove his name from the deed if Brooke does the same with their joint banking account. Brooke can hear Mark's voice in every twist of the conversation. Then Mark and Donna attempt to access Bert's bank accounts directly, prompting urgent calls from the bank manager. The family hires a new ...
1 Jun 2026
Expert Nathan Spaling
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. In this special bonus episode of Beware the Mysterious Mark, featuring Nathan Spaling, a lawyer and registered social service worker, founder of the Capacity Clinic and a co-founding member of the Canadian Centre for Decision-Making Capacity. Nathan talks about a wide range of topics, including mental capacity, the documents meant to protect older adults, and the disconnected system that too ofte...
29 May 2026
Trailer 2
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. A friendly new face. A little too helpful. A little too close to Dad. Beware Mysterious Mark is the audio drama about the kind of danger that doesn't break in. It gets invited. As Mark delves deeper into one family's life, the people closest to him begin to notice troubling things. We've passed 2,800 downloads in just over a month, and Episode 5 is now streaming. Five episodes in, and Mark's grip...
28 May 2026
Mark Doesn't Have a Dime
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Constable Fredericks of the RCMP arrives at Poplar Hill after quietly investigating Mark Marshall's background. He spends an hour with Bert, gently outlining the warning signs of elder financial abuse, then alerts Brooke of his concerns and galvanizes the involvement of local support authorities. Meanwhile, longtime family friend Vicky overhears Donna at Poplar Hill, confirming the family's worst...
25 May 2026
Bonus Episode One - Charlotte Salomon
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. In this special bonus episode of Beware the Mysterious Mark, producer Bill Collins sits down with Victoria lawyer Charlotte Salomon of Infinity Law, a board member of the Estate Planning Council of Victoria, for an in-depth conversation about the legal machinery that surrounds, and sometimes fails to protect, older adults facing financial exploitation. Drawing on three decades of practice in will...
21 May 2026
I Don't Want to Live With Them
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Mark and Donna begin maneuvering Bert toward buying them a house, first one property, then another, then another. Brooke is expected to participate financially but when she pushes back, the next scheme appears. Bert privately admits he doesn't want to live with them, but can't bring himself to say no. By December, Mark and Donna fly to the Caribbean while a concerned family friend, panicked by wh...
14 May 2026
That Guy's Stalking Your Dad!
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Bert's geriatric psychiatrist tells Brooke that Mark is a sociopath, and she's in for a long fight. Days later, a notary calls out of the blue. Mark brought Bert into her office to change his will and revoke Brooke's Power of Attorney. The professional refused, then broke confidentiality to warn Brooke. The family's lawyer agrees: this is textbook undue influence, and the alarm bells are deafenin...
7 May 2026
I'd Be Honoured To Change Your Dad's Nappies
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. With Diane gone Bert is grieving and lonely. Mark and his partner Donna step into the void lavishing attention on the elderly widower while making increasingly bold offers to move in take over his care and be the family he needs. Brooke is heartbroken by her father's refusal to talk about her mother and begins to worry that something more calculated than simply friendship with Mark and Donna is u...
30 Apr 2026
He Makes Me Do Things I Don't Want To
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. When 90-year-old Bert Cooper meets the charismatic Mark Marshall, he believes he's found a kindred spirit, a worldly, accomplished friend full of stories. His wife Diane, senses that something is off. His only child, daughter Brooke, finds the man tiresome. Within months, Bert is repeating Mark's stories obsessively and worrying about the near-stranger's rental situation. The slow erosion of the ...
21 Apr 2026
Trailer
Please send us a note leaving contact details if you have been affected by elder financial abuse. Beware Mysterious Mark is a ten-part audio documentary about elder financial abuse, built around one harrowing true account of how a predator isolated an elderly man from his family and systematically took control of his life and his assets. Names have been changed. Events and conversations are drawn directly from the family's own detailed records. Told by storyteller Nancy Miles, whose partner B...
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