5 Major Red Flags That You’re About To Be The Victim Of A Senior Scam

Anyone can be scammed, but older adults tend to be targeted the most, according to the FBI’s most recent annual internet crime report. As a group, seniors lost almost $5 billion last year.

But if you’re a senior scam victim, that doesn’t necessarily mean crooks think you’re feeble-minded. They just think you’re rich.

“The concentration of wealth in the hands of older adults, roughly half of all U.S. wealth, makes them a prime target for financial exploitation,” said Tim Sheehan, CEO and co-founder of Greenlight, a company that offers a debit card for kids but recently came out with a product called Greenlight Family Shield, an app designed to help seniors keep their money safe from scammers. (It’s one of a slew of services designed to protect seniors from financial elder abuse and being conned out of their money. Carefull, Eversafe and True Link Financial are some others.)

If you’re worried about being a target, how can you tell you’re about to be scammed? It’s not easy, according to Joy Loverde, a Chicago-based eldercare consultant and author of books including “The Complete Eldercare Planner, 4th Edition.”

“There are some people who are just really good at acting over the phone, who can make themselves sound like government officials or employees of retail stores,” Loverde said.

That’s actually a good way to look at it. The scammers are actors, and if you’re targeted in a scam, crooks are counting on you to play the scene as they’ve written it. If their role is convincing, you’ll believe their performance and be a perfect scene partner.

But fortunately, there are signs to look for that may help you realize you’re on your way to becoming a cautionary tale.

Not every scam will cause you to feel alarmed, but many will. Think of the classic grandparent scam, where you get a phone call from somebody claiming your grandchild is now in jail and needs a lot of bail money, lest they get roughed up by their beefy cellmates.

“Scammers count on panic. If a caller claims you must act now — pay a fine, verify your identity, or rescue a relative — slow down,” said Scott Hambuchen, the CEO of First Orion, a North Little Rock, Arkansas-based company that offers technology for businesses to brand their calls, such as by including their logo on the caller ID, so customers can distinguish the real companies from scammers.

Your panic works in the scammers’ favor. “Nobody’s brain is wired to think that there is a scam going on,” Loverde says. She said she’s always hearing victims of scams say things like, “It wasn’t until an hour later that I realized…” or, “I hung up the phone, and then I realized I got taken.”

“That’s so common, where they didn’t get it in the moment, but they did once they had a little time to think,” Loverde said.

The best thing you can do when you’re panicked — in almost any situation, frankly — is to try to create some space from the stressful situation and just think about it. That’s the worst outcome for any scammer, and if they won’t give you that space, you should be very suspicious.

Isn’t this the same thing as being panicked? Not necessarily. Feeling the pressure to make an instant decision may not involve panic at all, but maybe excitement.

For instance, you might stumble onto a website that looks like it belongs to a real store, but it’s actually selling you bogus merchandise with one goal: to get your credit or debit card information. Or maybe somebody’s persuaded you to invest in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity before this chance slips through your fingers.

However the “scene” unfolds, whether you’re excited or panicked, “pressure tactics are a red flag,” Hambuchen said. “Always hang up and verify the claim independently.”

Sheehan agreed. “Scammers often create urgent, fear-based scenarios that pressure and isolate seniors, deliberately crafted to bypass rational thought while making it difficult to prioritize judicious financial decision-making,” he said.

And that pressure you’re feeling to act now or you’re doomed, that’s “a major red flag,” Sheehan said.

If somebody has just parachuted into your life and turned it upside down, telling you that you need to empty your bank account before hackers steal your money or whatever story you’ve been given, that’s a sure sign something is amiss.

But plenty of scammers do their best to make you feel like you do know them — and can trust them. Many romance scams involve a criminal building up a relationship over email or through texting and phone calls, or maybe even a Zoom call, causing you feel like you know them and are thus happy to send them $10,000 to help them pay for their mother’s funeral or whatever sob story they’re handing you.

Even if a scammer doesn’t invest a lot of time into earning your trust, many of them can do it within a phone call.

“These scammers make victims feel very comfortable and come off as [trustworthy]. That’s why they’re so good at it,” Loverde said.

If you have kids or grandkids, you’ve probably warned them about stranger danger. It’s real for adults, too. It’s just that instead of a creepy man in a van offering you candy or the chance to pet a puppy, the stranger is going to probably come to you via a text, a phone call, instant message or email.

“A legitimate business won’t unexpectedly ask for your Social Security number, credit card details, or login credentials over the phone. If you didn’t initiate the call, don’t share sensitive data,” Hambuchen says.

But some criminals don’t ask for sensitive data, which is how they come off as trustworthy. In March, a 67-year-old woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico, received a text from Apple (or so she thought) and was told that her bank account had been used to make an unauthorized purchase. Believing her savings were at risk, the woman called the number provided and was soon talking to a reasonable-sounding person who didn’t ask her for any personal information. The person simply suggested that she withdraw her money and put it into a cryptocurrency account, which the scammer, of course, had access to.

If the 67-year-old scam victim had contacted her bank on her own, without using the phone number provided to her, she could have avoided the scam.

Hambuchen points out that a lot of these encounters can be avoided by letting unknown callers leave a voicemail.

“If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. Many scam calls don’t. This simple habit can dramatically reduce your risk of falling for a phone scam,” Hambuchen said.

This is often how scams unfold. There’s got to be a convincing reason you’re going to give money to a total stranger, so the “police” text or call you to say that your college kid is in jail, and if you want them out, pay up bail money (which happened earlier this year to parents of University of Wisconsin-Madison students). Or a fake lawyer will contact an immigrant and say they can help them become citizens for very real fees.

Or one minute, you’re living your life, and the next minute, you’re talking to an “FBI agent” who wants you to help bring down an illicit fentanyl smuggling ring — or who offers some other wild scenario to convince you to hand over your life’s savings — which is what happened to a retired therapist in Maryland in 2023.

Yes, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and there are very real police officers, judges or FBI agents out there, some of whom surely call and text people out of the blue. But if you’re talking to one on the phone or through email and you’ve never actually met the person, and they initiated contact, common sense suggests you shouldn’t automatically believe the person is who they say they are.

Loverde says that many older adults who fall for scams may not have a good support system.

“Family members would be wise to talk to their parents or grandparents and say, ‘If you get a piece of mail that looks suspicious or a suspicious phone call, don’t worry about hurting the person’s feelings. Hang up and tell me about it,’” Loverde said.

Likewise, if you’re worried about being scammed, there’d be no harm in asking family members or friends to be your sounding board if you end up finding yourself in any unusual financial situation.

Your alarm bells should now be blaring. Sheehan said that while there might be some legitimate organizations that occasionally want you to make a payment using an unusual method like a wire transfer, it’s extremely rare. Scammers love these unusual payment methods, however, because gifts cards, wire transfers, peer-to-peer platforms like Venmo and Zelle, and cryptocurrency “are difficult to trace and reverse,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan said that his well-educated and successful father-in-law once almost fell for a scam:

“He accidentally clicked on something that installed malware on his computer. A pop-up appeared claiming he needed tech support, and when he clicked it, he was directed to scammers posing as legitimate technicians,” Sheehan said.

The “technicians” fixed the issue by remotely installing software and gained access to his computer and his bank information.

“They told him he needed to pay for the service but claimed they couldn’t accept credit cards,” Sheehan said. “They repeatedly insisted that gift cards were the only acceptable form of payment, making it sound both urgent and routine.”

But the gift card request made his father-in-law pause and call Sheehan, who told him not to pay the “tech support.”

Sheehan said his father-in-law didn’t come away from the experience completely unscathed. He had to get new bank accounts and change a lot of financial information to protect himself.

Before people are scammed, they evidently think about the worst thing that will happen if they don’t empty their bank accounts right now. But instead, we all might want to start thinking — what’s the worst that could happen if we do empty our bank accounts?