3 Ways to Avoid Scams Targeting the Elderly

1. Understand the Problem

Each year, slick-talking scammers call your parents, come into their homes and invite them to seminars. They peddle promises of risk-free investments and gargantuan sweepstakes winnings. Then they take your parents' money and disappear.
The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 1.7 million seniors 65 and older (or 3.4 million people 55 and older) were fraud victims from mid-2002 to mid-2003, the latest period for which figures are available. It's a problem that experts say will balloon as 79 million baby boomers themselves age. Already, nearly a third of investor complaints to state regulators come from people 50 and older, according to the North American Securities Administrators Association.
"It's going to be a learning experience for the boomers to make sure that (fraud) doesn't happen to them as well as their parents," says Sally Hurme, a project manager at AARP.
Among the top traps ensnaring investors this year, according to the securities administrators association: oil and gas investments, Internet fraud and speculative investment products pitched at free-lunch seminars.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation identifies several other reasons elders are frequent targets of scam artists:

1. Elders are attractive marks for cons because they are more likely to have “nest eggs”
2. People who grew up in the 1930s, ’40s and ‘50s are more polite and more trusting than younger people
3. Elders are less likely to report fraud because “they don’t know who to report it to”
4. Elder victims, when they do report crime, make less reliable witnesses

There is a thorough discussion of how to recognize and avoid scams at the FBI website:
http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/seniorsfam.htm. The list is appalling.

2. Remember What Scammers are After

Understand what scammers want most:
Your name, address, and phone
Your date of birth
Your Social Security number (SSN)
Your driver's license number
Your credit card information
Your bank account information
Your mother's maiden name

3. Educate Yourself and Keep Learning

Three ways to avoid scams- educate yourself, keep learning as new scams are cropping up all the time, and establish rigid routines for protecting the information above.