Scam artists targeting elderly victims

Authorities say schemers better at hiding tracks

Actor Mickey Rooney testifies on Capitol Hill before a Senate special committee. He testified last year that he was a target of elder abuse by a stepson and others. 'I felt trapped, scared, used, and frustrated,' he said.

NEW YORK -- Boomers beware: Scams, frauds, and other financial exploitation schemes targeting older Americans are a growing multibillion-dollar industry enriching the schemers, anguishing the victims, and vexing law enforcement officials who find these crimes among the hardest to investigate and prosecute.

"The true con artists, who are in the business of making money off older folks through devious means, are very good at what they do," said Sally Hurme, a consumer-fraud specialist with AARP. "They cover their tracks, they use persuasive psychological means to spin their tales."

Elder-financial abuse encompasses a wide range of tactics, some perpetrated by relatives or trusted advisers, some by strangers via telemarketing and Internet-based scams. Researchers say only a fraction of the abuse gets reported to the authorities, often because victims are too befuddled or embarrassed to speak up.

Even with the reported cases, data are elusive because most federal crime statistics don't include breakdowns of victims' ages.

Nonetheless, there's ample research to convey the scope of this scourge.

A federally funded study conducted for the National Institute of Justice in 2009 concluded that 5 percent of Americans 60 and older had been the victim of recent financial exploitation by a family member, while 6.5 percent were the target of a nonfamily member.

The study, led by psychologist Ron Acierno of the Medical University of South Carolina, was based on input from 5,777 older adults.

A report last year by insurer MetLife Inc. estimated the annual loss by victims of elder financial abuse at $2.9 billion, compared with $2.6 billion in 2008.

"Elder-financial abuse is an intolerable crime resulting in losses of human rights and dignity," MetLife said. "Yet it remains underreported, underrecognized, and underprosecuted."

Older Americans are by no means the only target of schemers and scammers, but experts say they have distinctive characteristics that often make them a tempting prey.

Some have disabilities that leave them dependent on others for help; others are unsophisticated about certain financial matters or potential pitfalls on the Internet.

Many are relatively isolated and susceptible to overtures from seemingly friendly strangers.

"That's why telemarketing scams are so successful," said Karen Turner, head of a newly formed elder-fraud unit in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office in New York City. "They're delighted to have someone to talk with -- they almost welcome the calls."

Coupled with these factors, most older Americans, even in these troubled economic times, have tangible assets in the form of homeownership, pensions, and Social Security income that scammers seek to exploit.

Another factor is the older generation's patriotism and respect for authority, according to Sid Kirchheimer, who writes a weekly "Scam Alert" column for the AARP Bulletin.

"A lot of the scammers pretend to be with the government -- they say they're calling from the Social Security Administration or the IRS," Mr. Kirchheimer said. "People 65 and over, they often fall for that."

There's a multitude of scam scenarios, some of them new twists on old ploys.

Among the current variations:

The Grandparent Scam: Impostors, often calling from abroad, pose as a grandchild in need of cash to cope with some sort of emergency, perhaps an arrest or an accident. The grandparent is asked to send money and urged not to tell anyone else about the transfer.

Police in Bangor, Maine, said a man in his 70s was bilked out of $7,000 in January by a con artist pretending to be his grandson who called to say he needed money to get out of jail in Spain.

In another version, scammers pose as soldiers who have been serving in Afghanistan and call grandparents claiming to need money as part of their homecoming.

The Lottery Scam: Scammers inform their target that they have won a lottery or sweepstakes and need to make a payment to obtain the supposed prize. The targets may be sent a fake prize-money check they can deposit in their bank account. Before that check bounces, the criminals will collect money for supposed fees or taxes on the prize.

Police in Holden, Mass., say an 80-year-old woman recently was bilked out of $400,000 over the course of a year in her efforts to claim bogus prize money. In Los Angeles, authorities said last year that an 87-year-old widower fell for a lottery scam masterminded in Quebec, and mailed $160,000 in checks that he'd been told was for taxes on his purported $3.3 million in winnings.

Many recent lottery scam calls have come from Jamaica, to the point where its area code (876) is now cited as by anti-scam experts as a warning sign. Other Caribbean area codes also have been implicated.

The Toilet Paper Scam: Fraudsters often try to convince gullible targets into paying exorbitant sums for unneeded products and services, as exemplified by a scam uncovered in South Florida last year.

According to U.S. investigators, salesmen claiming their company was affiliated with federal agencies told their elderly victims that they needed special toilet paper to comply with new regulations and avoid ruining their septic tanks. In all, prosecutors said the company scammed about $1 million from victims from across the country, including some who purchased more than 70 years' worth of toilet paper.

Three suspects in that case, all from Florida's Palm Beach County, pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

But officials say arrests are the exception, not the rule, especially in telemarketing and Internet scams where there's no paper trail, no face-to-face interaction, and the perpetrators are often operating from abroad.

"It's very hard for us to investigate overseas -- the likelihood of us finding them and extraditing them is slim," said Ms. Turner, the Brooklyn prosecutor.

Paul Greenwood, a deputy district attorney in San Diego who runs an elder-abuse prosecution unit, says he's been trying cajole banks and credit unions to be more aggressive in protecting their elderly customers. One way is for those institutions to contact authorities if they detect suspicious withdrawal patterns.

Mr. Greenwood says he's spoken by phone with overseas scammers, initially pretending to be a potential victim, then revealing who he is.

"They're not in the least affected. They just move on to the next call," he said. "If they're outside the U.S., they're home free."

Nonetheless, Mr. Greenwood hopes his fellow prosecutors nationwide will become more aggressive in pursuing charges when they can catch a suspected scammer.

"The cliche is that these are victims with poor memories or who are reluctant to testify," Mr. Greenwood said. "We've found we can overcome that. Once you get them into court, the victims have such strong jury appeal that most of the time the defense just pleads out."

Cases of financial elder abuse surface at all levels of U.S. society.

For example, Anthony Marshall, the son of multimillionaire philanthropist Brooke Astor, was found guilty in 2009 of exploiting his mother's dementia to help himself to millions of dollars. He's free pending appeal.

Mickey Rooney, the 91-year-old actor, is suing his stepson and others on allegations that they tricked him into thinking he was on the brink of poverty while defrauding him out of millions and bullying him into continuing to work. The case is pending in Los Angeles Superior Court.

"I felt trapped, scared, used and frustrated," Mr. Rooney told a special Senate committee considering abuse-prevention legislation last year. "But above all, when a man feels helpless, it's terrible."

For elderly scam victims of modest means, the results can be catastrophic.

"The abuse can leave a person devastated," Ms. Turner said. "They're not young enough to grow a nest egg again -- the nest egg is gone."