If you’re 50 or older, or your parents are, look out: Financial scams targeting older adults have become so common that they are now considered the “crime of the 21st century,” according to the National Council on Aging.
Its top 10 list includes investment scams, the subject of a recent Wall Street Journal article that reported that number of state-level enforcement actions launched at the state level involving investors 50 or older doubled last year, according to the North American Securities Administrators Association.
Some of the other types of scams targeting older adults include Medicare fraud, counterfeit prescription drugs, charity scams and “the grandparent scam,” in which scammers call an older person. When the mark picks up, they say something along the lines of: “Hi, Grandma, do you know who this is?”
“When the unsuspecting grandparent guesses the name of the grandchild the scammer most sounds like,” the report says, “the scammer has established a fake identity without having done a lick of background research.”
Then the scammer typically asks for money to solve some financial crisis, such as overdue rent or even bail, to be paid via Western Union or MoneyGram, as such payments are generally untraceable.
The kicker: The scam artist will beg the grandparent not tell his parents, as “they would kill me.”