Financial scams targeting seniors have become so prevalent
that they’re now considered “the crime of the 21st century.” Why? Because
seniors are thought to have a significant amount of money sitting in their
accounts. These scams also often go unreported or can be difficult to
prosecute, so they’re considered a “low-risk” crime. Over 90% of all reported
elder abuse is committed by that person’s own family members, usually its their
adult children, followed by grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and others.
Review my list below, so you can identify a potential scam.
Medicare/health
insurance scams
Medicare enrollment form every U.S. citizen or permanent
resident over age 65 qualifies for Medicare, so there is rarely any need for a
scam artist to research what private health insurance company older people have
in order to scam them out of some money. Listen up, in these types of scams,
perpetrators may pose as a Medicare representative to get older people to give
them their personal information, or they will provide bogus services for
elderly people at makeshift mobile clinics, then use the personal information
they provide to bill Medicare and pocket the money.
Counterfeit
prescription drugs
Most commonly, counterfeit drug scams operate on the
Internet, where seniors increasingly go to find better prices on specialized
medications. This scam is growing in popularity, and here is the danger besides paying money for something that
will not help a person’s medical condition, victims may purchase unsafe
substances that can inflict even more harm. This scam can be as hard on the
body as it is on the wallet.
Funeral &
cemetery scams
Many Law Enforcement agencies are warning Senior Citizens
about the two types of funeral and cemetery fraud perpetrated on seniors. Here
scammers read the obituaries and call or attend the funeral service of a
complete stranger just to take advantage of the grieving widow or widower. They often make claims that the deceased had
an outstanding debt with them, then scammers will try to extort money from
relatives to settle these fake debts.
Fraudulent
anti-aging products
In a society bombarded with images of the young and
beautiful, it’s not surprising that some older people feel the need to conceal
their age in order to participate more fully in social circles and the
workplace. After all, 60 is the new 40, right? It is in this spirit that many
older Americans seek out new treatments and medications to maintain a youthful
appearance, putting them at risk of scammers.
Telemarketing
and/or phone scams
Woman on phone. Perhaps the most common scheme is when
scammers use fake telemarketing calls to prey on older people, who as a group
make twice as many purchases over the phone than the national average. While
the image of the lonely senior citizen with nobody to talk to may have
something to do with this, it is far more likely that older people are more
familiar with shopping over the phone, and therefore might not be fully aware
of the risk. With no face-to-face interaction, and no paper trail, these scams
are incredibly hard to trace. Also, once a successful deal has been made, the
buyer’s name is then shared with similar schemers looking for easy targets,
sometimes defrauding the same person repeatedly.
The grandparent
scam
Grandmother and granddaughter. The grandparent scam is so
simple and so devious because it uses one of older adults’ most reliable
assets, their hearts. Scammers will place a call to an older person and when
the mark picks up, they will say something along the lines of: “Hi Grandma, do
you know who this is?” When the unsuspecting grandparent guesses the name of
the grandchild the scammer most sounds like, the scammer has established a fake
identity without having done a lick of background research. Once “in,” the fake
grandchild will usually ask for money to solve some unexpected financial
problem (overdue rent, payment for car repairs, etc.), to be paid via Western
Union or MoneyGram, which don’t always require identification to collect. While the sums from such a scam are likely to
be in the hundreds or even thousands, the very fact that no research is needed,
makes this a scam that can be doneover and over at very little cost to the
scammer.
As always, stay safe !
Bird
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