West Michigan's Morning News
Elder Financial Abuse
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By the way, we're talking about elder fraud, financial fraud. - Yeah. - Somebody who is exactly 61 years old just got completely hoodwinked by a scammer and it was a very sophisticated scam. And so I just want everyone to realize how big a deal this is. You think, oh, you know, it's just for like the little old person sitting at home or the very young person sitting at home. It's for everybody. Elder when we talk about scamming means 60 and older. Not such a great name, I gotta be honest with you. $3.4 billion lost last year. $3.4 billion and these scams are so sophisticated. So can I tell you about the scam that in particular and I sort of illustrate the danger of it? - Please do. - You get a text, it's from your telecom company. It says, hi, we're from your telecom company. We're gonna call you very shortly. We have, there's a security alert on your account. They call you and it shows the name of the company you do business with, okay? The person says, oh my God, it sounds very professional. I'm here from blah, blah, blah. And here's my phone number. If you need to call me back, if we get disconnected, what this is just confirming that you're you, Jill Schlesinger, yes I am, blah, blah, and it goes on and on. And then they basically say, your account has been hacked. We're gonna turn your phone service off. We're gonna keep this one that I'm talking to you on, but any other of the phones. And they have the names of the people who are on your account. We're turning their phone service off, okay? Yes, okay. Those phones go off, by the way. The other phones, yours stays on. And all of a sudden you're giving them information, like here's my password, here's what I need to do, change your password, send us a payment upfront so we can turn the service on. We'll credit your bill on the next billing cycle. All of a sudden they have your credit card. This is, I mean, this particular instance only amounted to like $500 of charges before the person was like, oh my God, what am I doing? But I wanna be clear that this can amount to thousands of dollars that are very difficult. These dollars are hard to get back. And Jill, this is at a time when, if you've got somebody like I do an elderly mother, we're forcing her to use her cell phone because everything is online now. When it comes to her medical charts and all, mom, all you need to do is press this button. It'll tell you what appointments you have today. So we're forcing them to do stuff that they're not comfortable with. And I guess shouldn't be surprised the technology sometimes is biting them. Yes, and I think that the other frauds that are very interesting in terms of the way they perpetrate these frauds are the ones where they're a little more patient. You know, it used to be the fraud store, the criminal sends out a phishing email. Hey, click this link. And then people are smart enough, like, oh, I'm not clicking any links, right? Then they started to say, let me go on social media going on dating apps. And let me start engaging with people. 'Cause you can really engage with someone on social media regardless of the age, right? Now you're engaging, you're talking, you're developing a relationship. And all of a sudden that relationship blossoms and all of a sudden the person's like, oh, I noticed that you do blank. I noticed that you posted this thing about investing. Oh, yes, I did, or whatever, or not. Or I noticed that you are doing something on your site, on your little page. And they start engaging with you that way. And then all of a sudden you've got a relationship that blossoms into a full-blown, like what appears to be a real relationship and then becomes really bad because that means that all of a sudden you're confident. So like you've heard about a confidence man, confidence game, these are essentially the keys to get all the information that the fraudster needs. So it can be not just your social security number. It could be like, hey, you should buy crypto, I'm buying crypto, if you're uncomfortable doing it, I can do it for you, let's do accounts together. All these things, they really are ensnaring more and more people. And I know people feel like dopey, like, oh, I can't believe I got scammed. That's what my friend said to me, she called me crying. She's like, oh my God, I can't believe it, I did this. I said, don't worry, everybody is falling for this 'cause it's not just elder, it's everyone, we're busy. And as you said, we are conducting our lives online and digitally and through our phones. So we are much more apt to make a mistake because we are so immersed in this world. - We will put the link to Jill's blog where there's more information about reaching out to the FBI, the real FBI. We'll get it in the podcast section at woodradio.com. Jill Schlesinger, thank you.