Sometimes people are just too trusting. Especially older people. My grandfather (who is 90) still believes a man's word is golden. When he was my age, that was mostly true, but these days, well...
It's like the roofing scam around here last year. We had a bad hail storm, and older people were hiring people (who they thought were contractors) but were really scam artists. They got the money, and never re-did the roof! I did my research on the contractor we hired, because I wanted to hire local people, not the ones who come to town just for storm chasing. Besides, hard to believe, but some people don't have access to the internet.
Yes, we all should do our research and question when deals seem "to good to be true", but sometimes we can all be fooled!
East Texas, you are a good person to try and help her.