[US] Grandpa may have spent $100k on “silver bars” stored in a mystery vault and now refuses to talk about it.

Hey Reddit, I’m hoping someone here can help or at least tell me if this sounds as sketchy as I think it does.

A few years ago, my grandpa told us he was putting a lot of money into silver bullion as an “investment for the future.” He said it was going to be stored in some special secured vault somewhere. No address, no company name, just super vague. At the time we thought it was odd but didn’t really press it.

Now fast forward to today. He’s retired, a widower, lives alone, and is super into conspiracy theories and political stuff he sees on the Rumble app. I brought the silver thing up recently and he got really defensive. He said something like “it’s my money, I can do what I want. You’ll all thank me when I’m gone.”

My mom was able to get a bit more info out of him and apparently he spent almost $100,000 on these silver bars. But he still doesn’t know (or won’t say) where the silver actually is, who is holding it, or how to access it. No paperwork. No contact info. No details. And when we try to ask more, he shuts down.

I honestly think he knows something’s wrong but doesn’t want to admit it. I’m scared he got caught up in one of those fear-based silver investment scams that target older people with “the world is ending, buy silver now” type messaging.

We’re trying to figure out if there’s anything we can do from here. Like how would we even find out if the silver exists? Has anyone seen a scam like this before? And how do we protect him financially if he really did lose all that money?

Any advice would help. We’re worried and kind of at a loss right now.