Elder fraud is on the rise in several U.S. states, a recent report has found, with the average amount of money stolen last year through scams of Americans over 60 totaling more than $36,000.
According to All About Cookies – an organization that aims to educate on online privacy and digital security – this was an increase of three percent, The 10 states that saw the largest increase in elder fraud between 2022 and 2023 were Arizona, Utah, Rhode Island, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, Oregon, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
Arizona jumped to the top in the most recent report, with a 36 percent increase, after ranking fourth in 2022. Utah was second, with a 23 percent increase.
Rhode Island closely followed in third with 22 percent. Per 100,000 senior citizens in the state, 100 elder fraud complaints were recorded – compared to 82 the year prior.
“One thing we noticed when evaluating that report is that scammers seem to be getting better at picking out the most valuable targets. For identity theft, that means devoting scam efforts to cities in states where people make more money than the rest of the country on average and pulling away from cities in lower-income states,” Josh Koebert, researcher and study author at All About Cookies told Newsweek.
“With this in mind, it seems that criminals are focusing on areas with lots of elderly people.”
The states with the largest decrease in elder fraud were Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, Wyoming, Alaska, Nevada, Michigan, Florida, and Kentucky.
Elder complaints fell the most in Maine between 2022 and 2023 – by 16 percent, just beating out Vermont, which also saw a 16 percent drop (the report stated this drop was a few decimal points lower than Maine’s).
New Jersey saw a similar decrease – 15 percent – from 113 cases in 2022 to 96 in 2023.
“For states where elder fraud dropped the most, in some cases the reason for the sharp increase is simply because the crime was so incredibly common the year before that a drop felt inevitable,” said Koebert.
He caveated that rates of elder fraud were still high, despite the decreases.
The report’s figures were based on official complaints to the FBI, which recorded just over 100,000 cases in 2023. Koebert suggested that the true number could be much higher – between five to six million per year – based on other sources cited by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
How to Prevent Elder Fraud
“There are lots of preventative measures people can take, and many are very simple,” Koebert told Newsweek. “First and foremost, education is key. Teaching seniors what common scams look like, how to identify them, and how to avoid them can go a long way towards reducing financial theft. As internet and computer literacy increases among the elderly population, it makes it harder for scammers to confuse and take advantage of their victims,”
“Similarly, increasing knowledge about how these scams work among people like police officers and bank workers can help those people identify when a senior is being scammed and intervene to help. Offering additional public resources about these risks would prove beneficial as well,” he added.
Koebert also recommended making simple enhancements, such as increasing security settings for online and financial accounts.
The DOJ estimates that 10 percent of those age 65 and older experience some form of elder abuse, including financial exploitation, in a given year.
It says warning signs include:
- Sudden changes in bank accounts or banking practices, including an unexplained withdrawal of large sums of money by a person accompanying the elder
- The inclusion of additional names on an elder’s bank signature card
- Unauthorized withdrawal of the elder’s funds using the elder’s ATM card
- Abrupt changes in a will or other financial documents
- Unexplained disappearance of funds or valuable possessions
- Substandard care being provided or bills left unpaid despite the availability of adequate financial resources
- Discovery of an elder’s signature being forged for financial transactions or for the titles of his/her possessions
- Sudden appearance of previously uninvolved relatives claiming their rights to an elder’s property or possessions
- Unexplained sudden transfer of assets to a family member or someone outside the family
- The provision of services that are not necessary
The U.S. Justice Department’s Elder Fraud Hotline is (833) 372-8311.
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