Fraud and scams: Are you protecting your elders?

How can I protect my elders from scammers and what should I do if they have been defrauded?

My elderly father recently asked me to review a letter he received that he believed came from the state tax authorities. While it took me less than thirty seconds to recognize it was a scam, when I tried to show him some of the telltale signs of fraud, it was clear that he wasn’t grasping the concept of email typosquatting (i.e. - creating an email address that is a slight misspelling of a legitimate address) because he, like many older senior citizens, doesn’t use email. To mitigate this problem, I identified all his accounts, closed a couple of dormant accounts, and told him to only open letters from those accounts that remain; otherwise, put the letters in a box for me to review when I visited. Why did I do such hand-holding? Because, some communication comes from legitimate organizations that are legally seeking donations to their cause, but at the same time, they are taking advantage of elders who tend to be willing to respond to their pitch.

In its Elder Fraud report, the FBI noted that seniors in the US are defrauded out of $3 billion annually. As average life spans grow, and technologies like artificial intelligence improve, the scams we’re most prepared to defend against today could become passé within months, not years.

Some of the common fraud targeted towards elderly individuals that the FBI cited in their report include:

Romance scam - Criminals pose as interested romantic partners on social media or dating websites.

Tech support scam - Criminals pose as technology support representatives and offer to fix non-existent computer issues.

Grandparent scam - A type of confidence scam where criminals pose as a child or grandchild, and claiming to be in time-sensitive financial need.

Government impersonation scam - Criminals pose as government employees like toll collectors, police, or tax authorities, and threaten to arrest or prosecute victims unless they agree to settle non-existent debts or fines.

Family/caregiver scam - Relatives or caregivers coerce the elderly who trust them to give them access to their nest egg.

There are probably as many ways to try to protect ourselves from scammers as there are ways to scam us. Trying to protect loved ones who don’t have technical aptitude, who tend to be less inclined to report that they have been taken advantage of, and who sometimes engage strangers in a simple attempt to engage with people outside their limited sphere only makes the challenge more foreboding.

This is overwhelming, what can we do?

Like any risk, we can’t always stop fraud completely but we can proactively manage it; reducing the probability that any of our loved ones are victimized.  If we think we’ve identified a case of fraud, we should file a report at the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

We should also take precautions like limiting our exposure to credit accounts that aren't often used yet hold valuable personal information. Similarly, make sure to regularly change passwords, use authentication apps, and collect and shred any mail so thieves can't steal it and apply for credit under your name. None of these efforts is guaranteed or even likely to stop your elders from being victimized once they've been targeted, nor are they assured to recover lost funds or assets. However, most scammers commit crimes of opportunity and will move on to the next opportunity if a potential victim is hard to deceive. By contrast, the lack of action tends to attract even more scammers because they think they’ve found an easy target.