Scammers Are Targeting Seniors...Here’s How To Ward Them Off

Scams are as present as always these days, and can target any of us no matter how savvy we are. Unfortunately, however, scammers have a habit of preying on older New Yorkers.

One astounding real-world case involved a woman believing that she was in a long-distance relationship with an Amnesty International worker in Afghanistan, who said that he needed her financial help to come back to the United States. The woman had sold her house and was living in a hotel, expecting to meet with the man in Georgia, when she discovered she had been misled.

This was just one grim scam outlined at a jam-packed training session hosted by JCC Marlene Myerson Center called the “Older Adult Scam Prevention Clinic,” which was sponsored by Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer. The training was run by the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Justice.

Deirdre Lok, the director of the Weinberg Center, said that scams “targeting older adults and vulnerable populations” have “spiked” over the last year or so. “It constantly feels like a catchup game,” she added. “Scammers are going for all of us. We’re all fair game. This is an equal opportunity kind of crime that’s happening.” Yet older people are often singled out due to “both ageist and non-ageist assumptions about tech use,” she said, as well as due to accumulated wealth stemming from savings.

The best way to give scammers an advantage, Lok clarified, is not sharing your suspicions about a possible scam with others. “One of the things scammers want you to do...is they want you to act fast,” she said, which is all the more easy if you don’t talk to others to sniff out a possible fraud.

Three strong steps to reduce the risk of getting scammed, according to the training, are: slowing down, asking a friend for their take, and not responding or initiating. This last element includes not saying anything back, not giving money, not giving personal information (this one is key), and not clicking on anything.

Josh Holt, a senior staff attorney with the Weinberg Center, outlined just some of the various scams that afflict New Yorkers: postal scams, romance scams, charitable giving scams. He said that what scammers are looking for, more often than not, are “not just the $2 you sent–it’s your personal information.” In other words, if you hand over your credit card info or your Social Security Number, you’ll be far more vulnerable to large-scale exploitation than just losing a one-time payment.

Romance scams can be some of the most psychologically damaging and hard-to-shake scams, Holt and Lok explained, due to their perverse reliance on the very real human need for connection and love. They then spoke about the woman duped by the fake Amnesty International worker.

Guests spoke of what they’re doing to combat scams at various institutions. Local Apple Bank managers Monique Smith and Shelly Ann Richards told the room about an old-school scam that is still apparently in vogue: the sticky mailbox trap. “We all send out mail, that’s evident. If you can, try to make it to the post office or the UPS...because people can alter your checks,” Richards said, by collecting them in web-like glue placed out of site in mailboxes and then “whitewashing” the original amount with a new amount that can drain your account.

One new scam arrives via a text messages but one easy tip off is that the text is originating from a phone number with a 12 digit phone number starting with the number “63.--which is the country code for the Philippines. The scammers want you to pay off a relatively small ticket, but once you turn over personal info, you are liable to be ensnared in a bigger scam.