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Finding Them Easier Prey,
Scammers Target the Elderly
David
Crary, Associated Press
March 5, 2012
Boomers,
beware: Scams, frauds and other financial
exploitation schemes targeting older
Americans are a growing multibillion-
dollar industry enriching the schemers,
anguishing the victims and vexing law
enforcement officials who find these
crimes among the hardest to investigate
and prosecute.
Researchers say only a fraction
of the elder abuse gets reported to the
authorities, often because victims are
too befuddled or embarrassed to speak
up. Even with the reported cases, data
is elusive because most federal crime
statistics don’t include breakdowns of
victims’ ages.
Nonetheless,
there’s ample research to convey the
scope of this scourge.
A
federally funded study conducted for the
National Institute of Justice in 2009
concluded that 5 percent of Americans 60
and older had been the victim of recent
financial exploitation by a family
member, while 6.5 percent were the
target of a nonfamily member. The study,
led by psychologist Ron Acierno of the
Medical University of South Carolina,
was based on input from 5,777 older
adults.
A
report last year by insurer Met- Life
Inc. estimated the annual loss by
victims of elder financial abuse at $2.9
billion, compared with $2.6 billion in
2008.
Older
Americans are by no means the only
target of schemers and scammers, but
experts say they have distinctive
characteristics that can make them
tempting prey.
Some
have disabilities that leave them
dependent on others for help; others are
unsophisticated about financial matters
or potential pitfalls on the Internet.
Many are relatively isolated and
susceptible to overtures from seemingly
friendly strangers.
“That’s
why telemarketing scams are so
successful,” said Karen Turner, head of
a newly formed elder fraud unit in the
Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office in
New York City. “They’re delighted to
have someone to talk with — they almost
welcome the calls.”
Coupled
with these factors, most older
Americans, even in these troubled
economic times, have tangible assets in
the form of homeownership, pensions and
Social Security income that scammers
seek to exploit.
Another
factor is the older generation’s
patriotism and respect for authority,
according to Sid Kirchheimer, who writes
a weekly “Scam Alert” column for the
AARP Bulletin.
“A
lot of the scammers pretend to be with
the government — they say they’re
calling from the Social Security
Administration or the IRS,” Kirchheimer
said. “People 65 and over, they often
fall for that.”
There’s
a multitude of scam scenarios, some of
them new twists on old ploys.
Among the current variations:
•
The
Grandparent Scam: Impostors,
often calling from abroad, pose as a
grandchild in need of cash to cope with
some sort of emergency, perhaps an
arrest or an accident. The grandparent
is asked to send money and urged not to
tell anyone else about the transfer.
Police
in Bangor, Maine, said a man in his 70s
was bilked out of $7,000 in January by a
con artist pretending to be his grandson
who called to say he needed money to get
out of jail in Spain.
In
another version, scammers pose as
soldiers who have been serving in
Afghanistan and call grandparents,
claiming to need money as part of their
homecoming.
•
The
Lottery Scam: Scammers inform
their target that they have won a
lottery or sweepstakes and need to make
a payment to obtain the supposed prize.
The targets may be sent a fake
prize-money check they can deposit in
their bank account. Before that check
bounces, the criminals will collect
money for supposed fees or taxes on the
prize.
Police
in Holden, Mass., say an 80-year-old
woman recently was bilked out of
$400,000 over the course of a year in
her efforts to claim bogus prize money.
In Los Angeles, authorities said last
year that an 87-yearold widower fell for
a lottery scam masterminded in Quebec
and mailed $160,000 in checks that he’d
been told was for taxes on his purported
$3.3 million in winnings.
Many
recent lottery scam calls have come from
Jamaica, to the point where its area
code, 876, is now cited as a warning
sign by anti-scam experts.
•
The
Toilet Paper Scam: Fraudsters
often try to persuade gullible targets
to pay exorbitant sums for unneeded
products and services, as exemplified by
a scam uncovered in South Florida last
year.
According
to U.S. investigators, salespeople
claiming their company was affiliated
with federal agencies told their elderly
victims they needed special toilet paper
to comply with new regulations and avoid
ruining their septic tanks. In all,
prosecutors said the company scammed
about $1 million from victims across the
country, including some who purchased
more than 70 years’ worth of toilet
paper.
Three
suspects in that case, all from
Florida’s Palm Beach County, pleaded
guilty to wire fraud. But officials say
arrests are the exception, not the rule,
especially in telemarketing and Internet
scams, where there’s no paper trail and
no face-to-face interaction and where
the perpetrators are often abroad.
“It’s very hard for us to
investigate overseas — the likelihood of
us finding them and extraditing them is
slim,” said Turner, the Brooklyn
prosecutor.
Cases of financial elder abuse
surface at all levels of U.S. society.
For
example, Anthony Marshall, the son of
multimillionaire philanthropist Brooke
Astor, was found guilty in 2009 of
exploiting his mother’s dementia to take
millions of dollars. He’s free pending
appeal.
Mickey Rooney, the 91-yearold
actor, is suing his stepson and others
on allegations they tricked him into
thinking he was on the brink of poverty
while defrauding him out of millions and
bullying him into continuing to work.
The case is pending in Los Angeles
Superior Court.
“I felt trapped, scared, used
and frustrated,” Rooney told a special
Senate committee considering
abuse-prevention legislation last year.
“But above all, when a man feels
helpless, it’s terrible.”
For elderly scam victims of
modest means, the results can be
catastrophic.
“The abuse can leave a person
devastated,” Turner said. “They’re not
young to enough to grow a nest egg again
— the nest egg is gone.”
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