In other to avoid this type of stories, I use to default some don'ts intentionally.
See what I do, after creating your wallet, I'll write down your seed phrase and ask you to keep it safe. Then I'll send the phrase to your email (which is not recommended) and ensure you message me with same email. I know it is not a good practice, but it is a better risk than the kind story above. Years later, I can search my email to see the person's email and we can recover everything.
Due to his slowness in learning, I wanted to duplicate the phrase, give him one and keep one myself incase he looses his, but my mind wasn't settled, i had a lot of reasons to keep that phrase myself and also had alot of reasons not to, one thing I avoid alot is temptation, I don't want to be tempted to cheat on him because my conscience will judge me for it even though he won't find out due to his illiteracy, so to be perfectly truthful and trustworthy to him, I had to make him understand how important that phrase is and also make him promise he won't loose it, which he did, but eventually, he ended up loosing it, i am even more pained than he is, and I don't understand why 😂.