Scammers Scare, Extort Millions From Aging Pennsylvania Residents

Con artists are targeting aging residents in Pennsylvania and across America to defraud them of billions of dollars.

There’s a strong chance your parents or grandparents have already gotten a call or two trying to scare them into forking over their money.

The “grandparent scam,” for example, tries to trick elderly residents into believing their grandchild or another loved one has been thrown in jail, kidnapped or faces some other immediate peril that requires an immediate wire transfer of money or even an iTunes gift card. Clever con artists use sophisticated technology that includes recordings of the supposedly ransomed grandchild’s voice, making the calls seem frighteningly real.

In another version of the scam, someone pretends to be the loved one — accounting for the change in voice by claiming a broken nose.

The scammers were convincing enough to steal $42 million from their victims over a recent 15-month period, according to a report to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which is looking into scams against some of the nation’s most vulnerable. And $42 million is just a conservative estimate of actual losses in the grandparent scam.

“That’s outrageous, isn’t it?” said Kathy Stokes, the director of AARP’s Fraud Prevention Program. “They were probably asking for relatively small amounts of $500.”

In Pennsylvania, the top scams targeting the elderly are:

1. IRS impersonation scam
2. Unsolicited phone calls
3. Wire fraud
4. Elder financial abuse
5. Computer tech support scams

Residents of our state made 162 complaints to the Senate Special Committee on Aging Fraud Hotline in 2017, but that figure does not represent reports that might have been made to state attorneys general offices and other watchdog groups.

The “IRS scam” is one of several in the arsenal con artists use in a $37 billion annual industry that targets about 5 million older Americans each year, according to government data. Overall, the top 10 scams on elderly Americans are:

1. IRS impersonation scams
2. Robocalls / unsolicited phone calls
3. Sweepstakes / Jamaican lottery scam
4. “Can you hear me?” scam
5. Grandparent scam
6. Computer scam
7. Romance scam
8. Elder financial abuse
9. Identity theft
10. Government grant scam

Con artists change tactics at a dizzying pace. Scammers stole $65 million from the elderly alone through the IRS impersonation scam over a three-year period ending in 2018, but the volume of calls dropped dramatically after a series of high-profile arrests, according to the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

It’s as if con artists “turned over a page in the imposter script, and overnight, it went from IRS, IRS, IRS to, boom, Social Security,” Stokes said. “It just exploded.”

Crafty scammers spoof 202-area-code federal-government office numbers to make the calls look like the real thing, then use a scam to perpetuate a scam, telling their targets their Social Security account has been hacked, and they need the Social Security number to reinstate it before benefits are lost, Brauer of the National Council on Aging said.

“You worry about, ‘oh no, my account,’” he said.

Clever identity thieves pose as representatives of banks, credit card companies, creditors or government agencies and try to get their targets to give up sensitive information like account numbers, Social Security numbers, mothers’ maiden names, passwords and other identifying information. There are some easy ways to spot a scam call, but the most important thing people can do is hang up immediately and then call back at the number on an account statement or in a phone book.

The Social Security scam now supercedes the IRS impersonation scam in frequency of calls, Stokes said.

In Pennsylvania, victims had lost $1,850,751 to the IRS impersonation scam as of Jan. 31, 2018.

What you can do right now to protect yourself and your relatives:

1. Be leery about anyone calling on the phone about any emergency. Get a phone number to call back and verify the whereabouts and safety of the person the call is about.
2. Never give out Social Security, Medicare or financial account information over the phone.
3. In general, avoid answering calls from numbers you don’t recognize.
4. Don’t confirm any personal information. Avoid saying “yes” to any question, as calls may be recorded and the answer can be used as consent for a purchase you didn’t request.
5. Don’t press any numbers to stop calls. That will likely increase the number of robocalls you get, signaling to the scammers they’ve reached an active number.
6. Change your voicemail message so it doesn’t reveal your name or other personal information. If you want a legitimate caller to know they’ve reached you, go ahead and put your phone number on the message.
7. Don't return calls that claim to be from the IRS, the Social Security Administration, your bank or a local police or sheriff's department. If you think the message is legitimate, don't return the number left on a voicemail. Instead, look up the legitimate phone number.
8. Register both your landline and your cellphone numbers on the Do Not Call Registry.
9. Report robocalls and other unwanted calls with the FTC, by phone at (888) 382-1222 or (877) 382-4357, or online.
10. The FCC also has tips on how to stop unwanted and illegal robocalls.

Read more here about what’s being done to stop robocalls.

Reported and written by Beth Dalbey, Patch national staff