I don't see where his wife is a gold digger. According to the article, he's fallen for repeated scams and, the way they work is that once you've fallen for one scam, they sell your information to other scammers as an easy mark. As her spouse, he probably has access to all her money; if they get divorced, she'll at least be able to protect her half of their assets.

[Notice that it doesn't say his wife wants to leave him, just get divorced.]

his wife is also likely a gold digger?

Would you stay married to that dumbass? That stupidity is unforgivable.

I feel like it's not just being tech-savvy though. He seems to lack basic common sense.

Why would you assume that a free car giveaway would necessitate you paying transfer fees, why wouldn't that have already been pre-arranged. After all it's a Tesla car presumably Tesla the ones who are going to deliver it. Additionally why would the competition be exclusive to a niche Facebook group and not a national campaign. It all just seems very obviously a scam.

My parents aren't particularly tech savvy and often send me AI garbage but they wouldn't be easy marks because both of them have critical thinking skills, or at least my mother does. But my dad has learnt to do what he's told.

I dunno. My mom is his age and taught us how to build crystal radios when we were kids for fun. She still does it every few years with the grandkids as they grow up. She's still sharp as a whisk.

Cutting someone loose who makes terrible financial decisions is not gold digger behavior. They are likely retired and have limited resources to worry about and he just blew a big chunk of that. This also doesn't speak well of his intelligence overall so maybe this was a long time coming.

You don't have to be tech savvy to realise the adage "if it sounds too good to be true...". I would have thought Americans of all people would develop armour against scams. But even a modicum of due diligence like asking relatives, or googling his situation might have protected him.

I should add that my dad is 80 and housebound and gets scam calls all the time and bats them off like flies so being old is not an excuse.

Pfft, I would divorce my husband if he fell for a Musk grift, and it has nothing to do with gold digging. It would, however, mean that my husband kept hidden for a long time (which is impressive, I gotta say) just how big of a fucking moron he is and I won't be married to that. And he should be avoiding anything to do with Musk like the plague anyway.

Also, it would mean that he made the decision to throw away a bunch of money without even talking to me about it (because I would veto the hell out of it), which means he's an asshole.

Both good reasons to divorce someone imo.