Maybe you’ve noticed unnerving warning signals that an older adult has become entangled in financial fraud.

Her phone rings all day, but it’s not longtime friends calling. The house begins to fill with cheap junk, the sort of premiums scam artists dangle to induce participation in fake sweepstakes. Large, unexplained sums (or lots of smaller ones) are disappearing from a bank account, with checks written to unfamiliar people or organizations. Your relative or friend suddenly grows very interested in buying gold coins, investing in oil drilling or other get-rich-quick schemes.

As we’ve been discussing, a wave of recent research finds that older people are more vulnerable to cons . Though it’s not completely clear why, we do know that they’re more apt to expose themselves to potential scams by opening and reading junk mail or by accepting free meals or trips that involve sales attempts. And they’re less likely to take advantage of shields like do-not-call lists.

How to protect older people from these predators? “I don’t think we have a silver bullet,” acknowledged Doug Shadel, a former fraud investigator who now leads AARP in Washington State. His book on the subject, “Outsmarting the Scam Artists,” was published last month.

But he’s seen one tactic that doesn’t work: shame and blame. “If you say, ‘How could you be so stupid? How could you fall for this?’ — that creates a wall, and people just go underground,” he warned. Instructing a victim to just stop sending checks or buying coins or answering calls will probably prove similarly ineffective.


That’s because victims actually enter a heightened emotional state when they’re in the grip of a con, Dr. Shadel said, and may be impervious to reason or scolding. “They don’t realize how much it’s affecting their judgment,” he said. Predators call that state “the ether.”

Though research continues, there’s reason to believe that people can be trained to recognize phony sales pitches and to become conscious of their emotional responses, a kind of inoculation against the ether.

“What seems to work is someone warning them,” Dr. Shadel said. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

In Los Angeles, for instance, professionals at the National Telemarketing Victims Call Center (1-888-990-1988) will have multiple conversations to help callers recognize the red flags that mean scams. “It’s a slow process, not something that happens overnight,” said the center’s executive director, Melody Kleinman. “You want that person to say, ‘Oh, 876 — that area code is from Jamaica. Don’t answer it.’” The staff has been able to help people demand and sometimes get refunds.

At the AARP Fraud Fighter Call Center in Seattle (1-800-646-2283), trained peer counselors help callers figure out how to distinguish legitimate businesses and charities from bogus ones. This is where the Federal Trade Commission sends elderly lottery victims.

Family members may be able to provide a similar service, helping older adults discern fraud attempts by patiently going through their mail, discussing how much the person has sent to lotteries over the past few months and how much they’ve actually received in winnings.

They can also help provide due diligence on supposed investments, checking whether brokers are registered with state regulators or the federal Securities and Exchange Commission or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (F.I.N.R.A.). The authority offers a free hour-long video, which can be ordered from its Web site, on avoiding investor fraud.

Helping an older relative sign up on do-not-call and do-not-mail lists can also help by limiting his exposure. Once people appear on a “sucker list” as having responded to a fraudulent call or mailing, con artists will pursue them. “Within two weeks, they’ll get a hundred more mailings and may be sending out $2,000 to $4,000 a week, quickly running through their savings,” said Ms. Kleinman. Fewer callers and less mail might mean less temptation.

Even as I’m passing along these suggestions, I can almost feel readers’ hearts sinking. Caring for parents already entails so much monitoring — do we have to take on this task too? Shouldn’t the police and prosecutors and the F.B.I. be able to shut down these crooks?

But older fraud victims rarely report these crimes, and even when they do, perpetrators have proved adept at shifting to another scam. Using social media sites to glean enough personal information to impersonate a grandchild who needs $2,000 wired to London right now — and don’t tell Mom or Dad about the “mugging,” because they’ll be mad — is only the latest.

If the situation really gets out of hand, or a victim with dementia can’t protect herself, caregivers may need to take over the checkbook or even petition for guardianship. But that’s an extreme measure.

So I wonder whether readers have found creative ways to thwart some of these come-ons. What if you and your father watched the F.I.N.R.A. video together and agreed that neither of you would make an investment decision without discussing it with the other?

What if you went through the mail, shredded the fake lottery letters, but brought your relative a legitimate state lottery ticket each week? Would that maintain the pleasurable anticipation while avoiding scams? “Most of what people are purchasing with these tickets is two days of hope,” Dr. Shadel said.