The Senate Special Committee on Aging recently estimated that seniors lose 2.9 billion dollars each year to scammers and identity thieves  According to the committee the top ten scams targeting seniors are, IRS impersonators where the scammers, posing as IRS agents threaten their victims with tremendous penalties and consequences unless they pay taxes that really aren’t owed; Robocalls which are automated phone calls used as the basis of many different types of scams; Lottery scams such as the infamous Jamaican Lottery which uses phone lists of seniors to specifically target older people with phone calls in which they tell the senior that they have won a lottery, but must pay fees or taxes; Tech support fraud where people are convinced into paying for unnecessary tech support for their computers; Elder financial abuse by family members, home care workers and others who prey upon seniors to get at their assets;  Grandparent scam, where the seniors are called and tricked into sending money to scammers posing as their grandchildren in financial need due to some purported emergency;  Fake Social Security telephone calls where scammers call their victims and lure them into providing their Social Security numbers and other information used to make them victims of identity theft;  and lawsuit or arrest threats where the senior receives a call that appears to come from a law enforcement agency threatening arrest unless payments are made and Identity theft which is the second most common consumer complaint and can cause serious harm.

TIPS

Regular readers of Scamicide are familiar with the many times I have written about all of these scams and what you can do to protect yourself and members of your family from becoming victims of these scams.  On Thursday, February 21st I will be doing a free Webinar on Seniors, Scams and Identity Theft sponsored by the law firm of Margolis and Bloom with which I am affiliated.  Here is a link to where you can sign up for this free seminar.  I hope many of you can attend.  https://www.margolis.com/events-blog/webinar-seniors-scams-identity-theft

In the Webinar, I will be describing the above-described scams and many more as well as telling you how you can protect yourself and members of your family from becoming victims.

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