Tips To Protect Against Elder Fraud: Part 2 - KC Area

Elder financial abuse costs older Americans more than $2.6 billion per year. Follow these three steps to identify and protect against elder fraud.

1. Recognize the “red flags” of fraud.
2. Recognize the signs of victimization and how to help. 
3. Inform and educate on how to reduce the number of unwanted sales calls and mailings and how to deal effectively with telemarketers.

Stay tuned for Part 3 coming later this week.

The 2nd step is to...

Recognize when older people have been victimized or may be in grave danger and know how to help them.

Seniors may be in trouble if they:

• Receive lots of mail for contests, “free trips,” prizes, and sweepstakes or literature from foreign countries;
• Get frequent calls from strangers offering great deals or asking for charitable contributions;
• Make repeated and/or large payments to companies in other states or countries;
• Have difficulty buying groceries and paying utility and other bills;
• Subscribe to more magazines than anyone could normally read;
• Receive lots of cheap items such as costume jewelry, beauty products, water filters, and knick knacks that they bought to win something or received as prizes;
• Get calls from organizations offering to recover, for a fee, money they have lost to fraudulent telemarketers.

If you are trying to help an older person with a telemarketing fraud problem, don’t be critical. It could happen to anyone—con artists are very good at what they do.

Encourage them to:

1. Report actual or attempted fraud to the National Fraud Information Center, 800-876-7060. That information will be transmitted to law enforcement agencies;
2. Change their phone number if con artists call repeatedly; and,
3. Change their bank account or credit card numbers if they have fallen into the hands of thieves.