Scamming Senior Citizens

Fraud against the elderly is exploding. Here's what's happening...and how to prevent it.

Annette Manes, an 85-year-old widowed social worker. Photographer: Sarah Blesener/Bloomberg

I recently read a couple of disturbing stories about con artists defrauding seniors out of their life savings. It’s a growing trend. According to The New York Times, “Potential losses from cybercrime exceeded $12.5 billion in 2023, a 22 percent jump from 2022, and more than triple the levels in 2019, according to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.”

Seniors are being targeted both because of their significant net worth and because older seniors at risk of cognitive decline may be more susceptible to scams. But today I’m sharing stories of these scams because they are sophisticated enough that they could entrap anyone, regardless of your age.

Today’s Readings:

1. “How One Man Lost $740,000 to Scammers Targeting His Retirement Savings” - The New York Times

2. “Big Banks Watched as Con Men Wiped Out a Widow’s Life Savings” - Bloomberg

3. “Beware of scams targeting senior citizens: Here's tips to protect yourself or a loved one” - USA Today

4. “‘Phantom Hacker’ Scams Target Senior Citizens and Result in Victims Losing Their Life Savings” - FBI Public Service Announcement

Read widely. Read wisely. Be vigilant.

Max

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1. How One Man Lost $740,000 to Scammers Targeting His Retirement Savings (Link)

by Tara Siegel Barnard in The New York Times

SUMMARY

Mr. Heitin was one of many people interviewed by The New York Times who were ensnared in scams that could be so elaborate it’s as if they were created in a writer’s room testing different plot devices. Scammers can impersonate government officials, tech support staff or love interests. They coach victims on how to sidestep fraud prevention measures at financial institutions, and they use manipulative psychological tactics — isolation, a sense of urgency or preying on people’s willingness to trust or connect — to keep the scam going.

SELECTION

For nearly three months, Barry Heitin, a 76-year-old retired lawyer, thought he was part of a government investigation that felt like something out of the movies. He was actually assisting criminals in stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars — of his own money.

Last fall, he spent just about every weekday doing the legwork and making withdrawals from his bank accounts as part of an intricate scam: He believed he was helping the feds safeguard his money and catch thieves who were after it.

“They kept telling me, ‘This is a big case and we are going to stop a whole ring of people,’” Mr. Heitin said. “It was like a rabbit hole. I was going down the hole with them.”

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2. Big Banks Watched as Con Men Wiped Out a Widow’s Life Savings (Link)

By Tom Schoenberg, Ann Choi, Denise Lu, and Paige Smith in Bloomerg’s The Big Take

SUMMARY

How should a bank react if a customer’s behavior abruptly changes and their money starts whooshing out the door in a series of withdrawals, wire transfers and lavish international spending sprees?

In the case of Annette Manes, it began at JPMorgan in three bursts — each round bigger than the last.

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…For reasons Annette still struggles to understand, she began talking with the person who rang her home phone in October 2022. The conman said his name was Steve Baxter and that he worked in the fraud department at JPMorgan, which had just discovered that an employee had sold her information to criminals. He introduced her to a colleague he called Trevor Bingley, who said he was a fraud manager. Annette was skeptical…

…After a career assisting people with disabilities, Annette couldn’t resist when her longtime bank said it needed help catching a rogue employee and criminals preying on retirees.

The pair of scammers essentially asked Annette to go undercover as a victim, making it appear her money was getting siphoned away. For the operation to work, it was essential she keep everything secret, even from the bank’s branch staff and her family. When it was over, they would reimburse her, she said.

Baxter told her when to visit JPMorgan branches and how much to withdraw. By the time her bag of $100 bills at home weighed as much as a half-gallon of milk, she left it alongside a short wall by her driveway for a handler. She watched from a window as someone in a hoodie and sunglasses arrived in a vehicle to get it. “I never got a license plate because I wasn’t looking for a problem,” Annette said.

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3. Beware of scams targeting senior citizens: Here's tips to protect yourself or a loved one (Link)

by Betty Lin-Fisher in USA Today

SUMMARY

A brief overview of common scams targeting the elderly and advice for how to prevent them.

SUMMARY

Here are some scams that often target older adults – and tips from Chase and USAA on how to help prevent them:

• Artificial intelligence scams. Scammers are using AI to clone voices, posing as friends or family. A phone call will sound like a loved one in trouble, requesting money urgently. Kingsley suggests having a code word with your friends and family to verify their identity. Also, hang up and call back a known number for the person.

• Romance scams. Be wary of any romantic interests or new friends asking you to send them money, especially if you’ve never met in person. Never send money to anyone you don’t know well, met online or have never met in person.

• Tech support scams. Don't fall for pop-up messages on your computer or phone saying there's a problem. Don't give remote access to your computer or pay any fees. Also, beware of fake emails that seem to be an invoice for something you didn't order or a fake receipt for something you didn't pay for, meant to get you to click for more information.

• Familiar bank or company impersonations. Scammers will pretend to be from a reputable company to warn you about problems with your account or order. They'll try to trick the consumer into sharing personal or financial information. Don't pick up phone calls from numbers you don't recognize or answer unsolicited texts, Bashore said.

• Government or law-enforcement impersonations. Scammers will pose as representatives from the IRS, Social Security or law enforcement, demanding immediate payments or threatening law-enforcement action. The government will not call you to demand urgent action or threaten you. In most instances, government officials will contact you by mail if there is a problem.

• Investment scams. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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4. ‘Phantom Hacker’ Scams Target Senior Citizens and Result in Victims Losing Their Life Savings (Link)

Public Service Announcement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation

SUMMARY

The FBI is warning the public of a recent nationwide increase in "Phantom Hacker" scams, significantly impacting senior citizens. This one is short and well worth reading.

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This Phantom Hacker scam is an evolution of more general tech support scams, layering imposter tech support, financial institution, and government personas to enhance the trust victims place in the scammers and identify the most lucrative accounts to target. Victims often suffer the loss of entire banking, savings, retirement, or investment accounts under the guise of "protecting" their assets. Between January and June 2023, 19,000 complaints related to tech support scams were submitted to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), with estimated victim losses of over $542 million. Almost 50% of the victims reported to IC3 were over 60 years-old, comprising 66% of the total losses. As of August 2023, losses have already exceeded those in 2022 by 40%.

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postscript

Our digital era has made it easier for conmen to defraud their marks with ever greater sophistication. They can target victims who have assets and devise schemes that are believable enough that it isn’t hard to imagine falling for one of them.

I am particularly struck by the stories in these articles about fraudsters impersonating bank officials and law enforcement officers under the cover story of eliciting cooperation to catch a fraud in the act.

Just the other week, my wife received a phone call from someone claiming to be a deputy sheriff who was looking for assistance with an ongoing case. He left a voicemail with a phone number to call. She shared the message with me. First I googled the name of the supposed officer. All I found was one random Facebook post where, in the comments section of someone’s picture of the sheriff’s department, someone had mentioned the name of the officer who had allegedly left the voicemail. But that was the only evidence I could find of such a person in the department. So I called the the Sheriff’s department directly (not the number they asked my wife to call on the voice mail). Sure enough there was no one by that name in the sheriff’s department.

But the message had sounded official, and urgent to my wife. It made her concerned. She wouldn’t be alone. A lot of people fall for these kinds of deceptions, and many of the victims are the aged. Fraud against them is growing at an alarming rate. According to Bloomberg:

Annual fraud losses suffered by people over 60 shot up 255% to $3.4 billion in the past three years, according to complaints filed with a Federal Bureau of Investigation internet crime center. Yet that tally is a mere fraction of the total, the FBI says, because most reports don’t specify ages. A first-of-its-kind study by the AARP estimates yearly fraud losses by people over 60 now exceed $28 billion. Media reports about retirees losing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are proliferating.

You can measure the focus on seniors by dollar volume or by number of scams reported. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (or “IC3”) receives and tracks complaints made to the FBI from victims of fraud. They publish an annual Elder Fraud Report. The elderly are heavily targeted:

Over 101,000 victims aged 60 and over reported this kind of crime to IC3 in 2023. On the flip side, victims under the age of 20 years old seemed to be the least-impacted demographic, with about 18,000 victims in this demographic reporting suspected scams or frauds to IC3 last year. 

As a society we have traded the security of doing business with people you know for the convenience of moving money from the comfort of home with the “protection” of passwords. There are super hackers who might have the ability to crack into your accounts through brute force and there are dark web denizens who steal or buy personal information from one of the seemingly endless instances of data breaches of large companies. But a great deal of fraud happens not when an evil genius algorithmically cracks our cods but when we voluntarily give away access to our accounts because we have trusted the wrong people.

These risk are real and they aren’t going away. Please share these stories with your loved ones and look out for each other before it’s too late.

Read widely. Read wisely.

Max