According to the FBI elder fraud and scams cost American seniors almost 3 billion dollars each year and the instances of elder fraud exploitation has quadrupled in recent years according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This year, Congress passed the Stop Seniors Scam Act which established a Senior Scams Prevention Advisory Group which will provide the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with information about educational materials and programs for retailers, financial services companies and wire-transfer companies to educate their employees to recognize warning signs of elder fraud and stop it before it occurs.  The first meeting of the advisory group was just held last month.

The advisory group is focusing on expanding consumer education; improving industry training on scam prevention; identifying innovative methods to detects and stop scams; and developing research on consumer engagement to reduce fraud.

TIPS

It will be a considerable period of time before the advisory group puts programs into effect so meanwhile it is up to all of us to do what we can to prevent elder fraud.

Protecting seniors from the various frauds that target them is one of the primary purposes of Scamicide.com.  Here is a link to an interesting article I wrote for the magazine of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners that describes some common senior scams and how to protect people from these scams.  https://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4295009331

Here also is a link to a webinar I did regarding elder fraud.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JM_azReaK0

Education is a key element in preventing fraud and scams of all kind.  If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com I suggest you subscribe Scamicide and suggest to your friends and family that they do the same so they can receive important new information each day about the latest scams, identity theft schemes and cybersecurity developments and how to protect themselves.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, it is free and all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and insert your email address in tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”