Senior citizens frequent targets of scammers

Senior citizens lose $36.5 billion a year to scams, according to a 2015 True Link Report on Elder Financial Abuse.

Nila Howard of Columbus, who was on the receiving end of a scam attempt last week, wanted to make sure she wasn’t the next victim.

Howard said she received a call Nov. 9 that showed up on her caller ID as “private.”

“I thought it could have been a family member calling me,” Howard said, so she answered the call.

“Grandma?” a man’s voice asked.

“I said ‘Yes,’” Howard replied.

The caller claimed to be in Miami, Florida, with a friend whose mother had died of cancer — and he was supporting that friend through an emotionally difficult time.

“I knew it was a scam from the beginning because our grandchildren do not call us. They text.

Secondly, our children are the type that always keep us informed on what our grandchildren are doing,” Howard said. “I played along because I wanted to find out how they conduct these scams.”

The story then shifted to the boys being at a Miami hospital helping a pregnant woman whose boyfriend had planted drugs in their car.

“We got arrested, and you know we would never do drugs,” Howard quoted the caller as saying.

“We’re at the police station. We got one phone call that we could make, and I made it to you.”

Howard said she knew the next request would be for money, and she was right.

“If you’re in trouble, you really need to call your dad,” Howard said she told the caller.

That wasn’t the answer he was looking for, and then asked to talk with “his grandpa,” Howard said.

She replied that she wanted to talk with the sergeant on duty there. If he would provide the phone number to the police station, “I will give this to your father to get this straightened out,” Howard said.

When that didn’t satisfy the caller, about five minutes into the conversation, Howard concluded: “I’m tired of this and don’t appreciate this scam.”

The caller hung up.

Notifying police

Howard said she did end up calling the police department — not one in Miami, but in her hometown of Columbus to report the scam attempt.

Any attempt to defraud someone is a crime, said Lt. Matt Harris, spokesman for the Columbus Police Department.

But getting enough evidence to track the suspect down and prosecute a case can be difficult, he said.

Some of the phone calls are international, beyond the jurisdiction of local police, Harris said.

Home-construction scams — to do roofing or sealing driveways during warm-weather months for example — are easier for local police to investigate because they are occurring in the community, he said.

“A lot of times it’s the elderly where their focus is on. They tend to be more trusting,” Harris said.

Scams targeting older residents are one of the six most popular attempts at financial exploitation, said Candice Rickard, chief risk officer for Old National Bank, which created a free course that outlines how senior citizens can detect, protect themselves against and report financial exploitation attempts.

The most popular scams aimed at seniors are as follows, Rickard said:

Common scams: Grandparent, Sweetheart, Advanced Fee/Lottery, Work from Home, Service Scams.

Social engineering: Leveraging human interaction online to learn more about the victim.

Spoofed emails: Fraudulent emails that appear to be from the victim’s actual account.

Phishing: Sending an email falsely claiming to be a legitimate business in an attempt to dupe the victim into divulging personal, sensitive information.

Pop-ups: These appear on the victim’s computer enticing them to click and download a “fix.” Instead, malware is added to the computer.

Friendly fraud: When someone in a position of trust utilizes that relationship to commit fraud. This type of fraud is sometimes referred to as trust abuse.

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Senior citizens frequent targets of scammers

Grandkids Enlisted To Fight Senior Fraud

The scam is simple: A fraudster pretends to be a senior’s grandchild on a foreign trip. The con artist calls the loving elder begging for money saying he or she is in jail or in some other trouble.

The crooks hide their actual whereabouts on fake caller IDs and are frequently based overseas, beyond the reach of local law enforcement.

To fight this type of fraud, the New York state attorney general’s office has started a prevention program that holds the promise of becoming a national model.

The program, called “Grandkids Against The Grandparent Scam,” was started in November, and involves giving 30- to 60-minute talks to high school students (along with pamphlets) telling them to warn their grandparents not to be victimized.

The grandparents should be warned by these students that if they get emergency calls from people claiming to be the grandchildren, they must first check with other family members to find out where the grandchildren really are.

The program also advises the youngsters to help prevent the spread of the fraud by limiting the amount of personal information they share with others and to “friend” only people they know on Facebook and other social media outlets.

Gary Brown, the statewide elder abuse coordinator with the New York's attorney general’s office, said the grandparent scams are growing and they are underreported.

The elderly are often afraid to tell their adult children they have been victimized, he said, out of fear the children will view this as a form of mental decline and that it will be one step in the process of losing their independence and going to a nursing home.

At least three other jurisdictions are said to be looking at the program. One is Oregon, according to Ellen Klein, the Oregon state attorney general’s director of consumer outreach and education.

“It’s a compelling means to get at the scam in a new way,” she said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to prevent people from becoming victims.”

To see the “Grandkids Against The Grandparent Scam” brochure, click on http://on.ny.gov/1DzLhRw.

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Grandkids Enlisted To Fight Senior Fraud

Wichita police: Scammers bilk thousands of dollars from elderly couple

A couple in their 80s is out several thousand dollars after scammers convinced them to part with money in exchange for a “jackpot” of more than $20 million, police said Thursday.

An 81-year-old woman called police Wednesday to report a check they had received wasn’t honored by their bank, Lt. James Espinoza said. She said she and her 82-year-old husband had been corresponding since October with a business calling itself American Family Publishers.

The scammers used telephone conversations and official-looking documents to persuade the couple to send several checks totaling more than $9,000 in exchange for a purported $20 million, Espinoza said.

“This wasn’t one of your ‘one phone call trying to get your money’ ” scams, he said.

Robbie Namee, trade practice specialist with the Better Business Bureau, said the case sounds like a classic lottery scam: The caller says the recipient has won a large sum of money, but they need to send a small fee so the money can be released. Or to pay taxes on the prize. Or for some other reason.

“It breaks my heart,” Namee said when she learned how much money the couple had lost.

Scammers hunt for victims, she said, and once they find someone who falls for their pitch, they look for other ways to extract additional money.

“People preying on the elderly is very shameful — very wrong,” Espinoza said.

An investigation into the scam is in its early stages, he said.

The scam is a reminder of an old but valid statement, Espinoza said: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Residents with elderly parents should keep an eye out to make sure they’re not being victimized by scammers, he said.

“Any time you’re contacted regarding a contest you never entered to begin with, it should be a red flag,” Namee said. “If you have to pay a fee to win money, that’s another red flag.”

If you’re being asked to send money out of state or out of the country to someone you don’t know, she said, “check it out.” Chances are, it’s a scam.

If there’s a quick deadline for accepting the money, she said, it’s another red flag.

“I hate seeing seniors getting caught up” in scams like this one, Namee said.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article5620752.html#storylink=cpy

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Wichita police: Scammers bilk thousands of dollars from elderly couple

Bank employees help catch suspected scammer

William E. Riley

Quick thinking by employees at a pair of Regions Bank locations led to the arrest of a Hannibal, Missouri, man accused of scamming older adults in two Southeast Missouri counties.

William E. Riley, 50, faces a Scott County charge of attempted financial exploitation of the elderly and a Perry County, Missouri, charge of resisting arrest.

On Dec. 1, Riley went to the home of an 88-year-old woman in rural Scott City, showed her some certification papers and said he needed to check the lightning rods on her home, according to a probable-cause affidavit filed by Capt. Jerry Bledsoe of the Scott County Sheriff's Department.

"After the inspection, Riley informed [the victim] that her lightning rods needed repair and she owed him $4,500," Bledsoe wrote. "[The victim] reportedly thought the repair price was too high but felt intimidated when Riley would not leave, so she issued a check to him in the amount of $4,500."

When Riley attempted to cash the check at Regions Bank in Scott City, bank officials became suspicious and called the victim, who asked them not to cash the check and said she had just written it so Riley would leave, Bledsoe wrote.

Reached by telephone Friday, Bledsoe said trying to cash a large check in a small town was a critical mistake by Riley.

"Typically, [scammers] want to get the money as quickly as possible, but on the flip side, when they are working in a smaller city, the banks know their customers," he said. "Bank officials find it questionable when someone from another area wants to draw a large sum of money."

Riley left the bank before officers could arrest him, but authorities caught up to him a few days later at the Regions Bank branch in Perryville.

"Initially, we had his name," Bledsoe said. "It was odd he used his real name. We thought it was fictitious at first, but we put out a statewide broadcast of the name used and Hannibal address."

A probation officer in Charleston, Missouri, responded to the broadcast, and Scott County officers were able to get a photo of Riley, which two bank employees picked out of a lineup, Bledsoe said.

Riley was arrested Wednesday in Perry County, Missouri, after a Regions Bank employee in Perryville called police to report another possible scam, according to a probable-cause affidavit filed by Sgt. Jason D. Kelley of the Perry County Sheriff's Department.

The bank employee said a paving company had given his client a quote of $3,000 to do some work at his home, but as soon as they finished the job, company employees told him the total cost would be $16,500, Kelley wrote in the affidavit.

The bank employee said when the client questioned the amount, one of the paving company employees, later identified as Riley, reduced the amount by $2,000 and accompanied the client to the bank, Kelley wrote.

Reached by telephone Friday, Perry County Sheriff Gary Schaaf said that's when officers discovered Riley and a man who was working with him, George Fogle Sr., both had warrants.

Fogle, 67, was arrested on an outstanding warrant out of Texas for scamming, Schaaf said.

When Kelley and Detective Jason Klaus responded to the call from the bank, Riley ran from them, Kelley wrote.

Kelley and Klaus caught up to Riley, who was charged with resisting arrest.

Bledsoe said Riley is part of a group of people who are suspected of running home-repair scams in Warren, Montgomery, Cape Girardeau and Audrain counties in Missouri and in Iowa, Kentucky, Texas and possibly Kansas.

"My investigation revealed he is part of a fairly organized group of people involved in scams involving lightning rods, paving blacktops, roofing repairs and cleaning gutters on homes," Bledsoe said.

He estimated the group is responsible for "thousands and thousands of dollars'" worth of scams.

Bledsoe said he's worked similar cases in the past, but the culprits usually are long gone before police are notified, making it difficult to find out who they were.

Schaaf said homeowners often sign contracts with the scammers, making it difficult -- if not impossible -- for police to run interference.

"We are familiar with it," he said. "We see it sometimes around here and in surrounding counties as well. They come to people's houses and do a substandard job and then charge three times what they told you before, and next thing you know, you're being ripped off."

Online court records show Riley has a long history of financial exploitation charges.

In 2009, he pleaded guilty to two counts each of theft and financial exploitation of the elderly in Pettis County, Missouri, and was placed on five years of supervised probation.

Riley successfully completed his probation in that case in January.

Also in 2009, he pleaded guilty to financial exploitation of the elderly in St. Charles County, Missouri, and was sentenced to three years in prison, online court records show.

At the time of his arrest Wednesday, he was wanted by the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole for a parole violation on an original charge of financial exploitation, and he also had a 2008 conviction for theft by deception in Marshall County, Kentucky, according to the Scott County probable-cause affidavit.

His bond was set at $25,000 cash only in the Scott County case.

Regions Bank spokeswoman Evelyn Mitchell said bank employees are encouraged to get to know their customers.

"We train our associates to look for unusual patterns," she said in a telephone interview Friday. "... Regardless of the market size, one of the things our associates do focus on is knowing their customers."

In an email message to the Southeast Missourian, Mitchell said employees are trained to spot potential financial exploitation cases.

"Regions Bank has procedures and processes in place to identify, investigate and report financial exploitation of older adults. This includes training associates to recognize potential elder financial exploitation," she wrote. "Our associates put their training to good use in this case to protect Regions customers and, hopefully, prevent future incidents."

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Bank employees help catch suspected scammer