All articles tagged with #elder financial fraud
Americans over 70 control about $53 trillion in wealth and are prime targets for financial scams; the article urges empathetic, proactive engagement with aging relatives, due diligence, and outside help—such as AARP's BankSafe Initiative—to prevent financial missteps, while noting that family dynamics can both aid and impede timely interventions.
Marjorie Bloom, a 77-year-old widow, fell victim to a tech support scam and lost $661,000. The scam involved a fraudster posing as a "fraud investigator" from PNC Bank who convinced Bloom to liquidate her savings and transfer the funds to cryptocurrency to protect them from criminals. However, the scammer disappeared, leaving Bloom devastated and realizing she had been defrauded of everything. This type of fraud is increasingly common and targets older adults, who lost $588 million to tech support scams in 2022. Older adults are particularly vulnerable to fraud due to their limited understanding of technology and online safety.