My unemployed brother secretly funneled ~600k out of our mother’s life savings account into her brokerage account and lost it all on trading options. Two years later he is still unemployed and not paying my mom back.

Throwaway because nobody knows about this story outside of those involved. For the last couple years, my mother has been dealing with my oldest brother who was able to wipe out her entire life savings (about $600,000) simply because of his own greed. He was hoping to quadruple her money and receive a payday but he ended up losing all of it. Unfortunately, he did all this behind the scenes and nobody else knew about it until it was too late. When we found out all her money was gone, he made several promises to pay it back but since then, >10k has has been paid back to her and he hasn’t paid her anything for the last year. He stays in his room 24/7 and he has never worked a job, but he has a degree in IT. The problem is that he is adamant against getting a job (or finding any solution) to fix this problem.

My mother doesn’t want to go to the police (or tell anyone period) and I know some of you might still say to go to the police/get a lawyer, but its not up to me and it wont get the money back because he has nothing. I’m really just looking for any advice here because its such a fucked yet fixable situation. But what can you do when you have a stubborn lazy brother that refuses to find a solution? I’ve tried talking to him but he gets hostile whenever anyone brings up this situation or the dreaded “J” word. He wants everyone to stay silent and forget about what he did but we are absolutely not letting this go.

TL;DR My brother took and lost all my moms money gambling on the stock market, he isn’t taking accountabilty/hasn’t paid her anything in the last year, constantly argues and makes excuses for not getting a job, and somehow still stays in our house rent free despite everything.

Location: Los Angeles