If you’re in the process of buying a home and waiting for settlement instructions from your title company, read on please. Maybe you’re still in the “looking for a home” phase…read on to avoid being a victim of the down payment scam.
To be perfectly honest, I have never heard View full post…
There are so many scams prevalent today, it’s difficult to keep up. From the innocent looking phishing e-mails to the brazen IRS impostors with their threats, the long list begins. All of them have one goal, and that is to trick you into giving them your personal information. Scams against the elderly are growing each year.
Many of the scams are directed at senior adults in one way or another. Downloading malware after clicking on an unknown link is one that many of the elderly fall prey to.
The main reason scammers target the elderly is a trust issue. Older adults will generally answer telephone calls from anyone and often pay a high price for that trait. Instead of tossing junk mail in the trash where it belongs, they open it and read View full post…
With all of the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially the loss of jobs for so many, unscrupulous scammers have found another way to steal your money. As unemployment continues to rise, fraudsters are now stealing your benefits by using unemployment insurance fraud.
It’s actually very easy for them to do. There are thousands of websites on the dark web where cyber criminals are selling your personal information to these fraudsters for a fee. We all hear about data breaches when some company has been hacked and information has been taken.
This is where the personal information usually ends up…on the dark web for sale to whomever wants to buy it. A criminal can buy your name, current address, social security number, family member names, place of employment, driver’s license information View full post…
Here we go again! Twice in the past week, we’ve been advised by the Federal Trade Commission of new scams being perpetrated against senior adults. This one is the timeshare reselling scam.
Many seniors, and also middle age adults bought a timeshare to spend vacations there or as an investment. After a few years, timeshare owners wanted to visit new places and some traded their unit with someone else in a different location. Others kept them because there wasn’t much of a market for them.
Many others wanted to dispose of their timeshare and listed it with a broker. Now enters the scam artist with their bag of tricks. They began telemarketing timeshare owners saying that they had a buyer in mind and that the sale would be consummated very quickly.
As soon as an owner would agree to allow this scammer View full post…
I call this one the “secret shopper scam”. Stores hire individuals to pose as a shopper to test employees knowledge of certain products or services, and also to see how a particular service is functioning.
It didn’t take long for scammers to figure out this could be a very profitable con. They simply revived a similar scam and adapted it to the secret shopper. The Federal Trade Commission has picked up on this and has reported a number of cases it is aware of lately.
This particular con begins in a very subtle way. You pick up your mail and find an important looking envelope, and when you open it, you see a check for several thousand dollars payable to you. A letter of instructions is enclosed and it states that you are being offered a job as a secret shopper.
It goes on to say that after you make just one trip to View full post…
Criminal financial scams against the elderly continue to be prevalent despite repeated warnings by many agencies. As a rule, scammers have no morals, and are willing to take whatever they can from the elderly. Most seniors are too trusting and are willing to help those in need and scammers count on that and govern their scams accordingly.
There are three (3) common financial scams to avoid that we will discuss here that continue to be perpetrated against senior adults. Many others exist, but these three are the most prevalent. They are:
In part 1 of these two posts of the most common types of scams perpetrated on seniors, we covered the Cemetery & Funeral Scam, Counterfeit Prescription Drugs, Fake Anti-Aging Products, Healthcare Fraud, Medicare Fraud, and the old Pigeon Drop Scam. In Part 2, we are listing 5 additional scams that are among the more popular ones. These 10 scams mentioned here are by no means all inclusive, as these unscrupulous individuals create more as situations change.
6. The Fake Accident
This one is fairly much self explanatory, and is similar to the Grandparent scam. An elderly individual is contacted, usually by telephone, and is told that one of her children or a grandchild has been View full post…
10 Scams That Senior Adults Must Be Aware Of
During the past few years, senior adults have been the primary target of various financial scams, to such extent, that it’s been suggested that this is the major crime of the 21st century. For some reason, con men and women have the mistaken idea that seniors are all wealthy, and have large sums of money at their disposal.
Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. With the economy in terrible condition, plus the recessions that we have suffered, many seniors have seen their nest egg dwindle to practically nothing. As a matter of fact, many have had to take on part time jobs just to make ends meet. So when some con is perpetrated on a senior adult, it can be a truly devastating crime.
These individuals who practice these scams don’t seek out only wealthy individuals. Their lack of morals causes them to approach any senior citizen and to find a way to take their money. Many times, these types of crimes go unreported because the victim is too ashamed to tell their family about it.
In these current times, many low income senior adults are targeted as well. To make this crime even worse than it actually is, it’s not always a total stranger who commits this crime. Statistics have revealed that over 90% of scams committed against the elderly, are perpetrated by their adult children, and other family members. What a disgusting, repulsive act to commit against a loved one.
