Elder Justice

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), millions of elderly Americans fall victim to some type of financial fraud or confidence scheme, including romance, lottery, and sweepstakes scams.

Red flags include:

1. Scammers will create a false sense of urgency to pressure their victims into acting quickly without thinking and will include common phrases like, "act now!" or "you'll be arrested!"
2. Fraudsters often impersonate authority or familiar figures, like a government agency, tech support, a financial institution, family member or even a romantic partner.
3. Scammers try to isolate you from trusted contacts. In other words, they try to discourage you from speaking to others. They might  say thing like, "don't tell anyone!" or "its a surprise!"  or even "its a private [or] top secret investigation."
4. They will exploit your emotions - fear, love, excitement, and guilt. They will threaten terrible consequences if you don't give them what they want, and they might even promise big rewards.

Seniors are less inclined to report fraud because they dont know how, or they may be too ashamed of being scammed. Please report incidents of elder fraud, as you may be protecting others from the same loss.

You can report elder fraud to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at ic3.gov