The elderly are being disproportionately targeted by scammers and con artists while facing little to no protection.
91-year-old Loris Sinanian from Blairsville, Georgia has reportedly lost over six figures after being conned by someone posing as an old friend who wanted to repay a $100 debt, Atlanta News First reports.
[adinserter block="1"]After establishing contact with Sinanian, the scammer was able to gain remote access to his computer, and then made it appear as if he had accidentally sent Sinanian $100,000 rather than $100.
Over the course of 10 days, the scammer then persuaded Sinanian to withdraw $109,000 in cash from his bank accounts, stuff the cash into boxes of books and then ship the boxes to an unknown address in New York.
Says Sinanian,
“I don’t want to use profanities, but I was very unhappy I was stupid enough to continue.”
Debra Stokes, executive director of the Georgia Council on Aging, a state-funded senior advocacy group, told ANF that “there are hundreds of cases like that across the county,” and thousands of reported cases statewide each year.
In the its 2023 Elder Fraud Report, the FBI said that elders had lost $3.4 billion to scams alone, though the number most likely grossly underestimates the true scope of the problem.
An 85-year-old woman’s life savings was recently drained by fraudsters posing as JPMorgan and the US government. Annette Manes, a widowed social worker, was a victim of a scheme that drained $1.4 million over the course of 279 days, but JPMorgan refused to reimburse her.
Late last year, Françoise Schorosch fell victim to the “Hi dad” scheme where the scammers pose as an elderly person’s grandchild asking for help.
In Schorosch’s case, hackers were able to access her emails while she was in the process of buying her first home.
“I was sharing discussions about working with solicitors, surveyors and estate agents. I had been keeping him abreast of all of the financials, and getting his advice because this was my first purchase. I suspect that someone managed to access our email exchange and then reach out to him directly.”
By using Schorosch’s email address – but with “email.com” instead of “gmail.com” – the fraudsters were able to contact her dad without raising suspicion, ultimately convincing him to wire €7,000 or about $9,100 from Deutsche Bank to a Nationwide bank account.
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