Elder fraud cost Floridians nearly $300M last year, report says

Perhaps they just lost a spouse, or went through a traumatic health scare. Perhaps, as they’ve grown older, they’ve simply become lonely. Then someone calls bearing good news.

Over 50 elderly Americans answered the phone to such news a couple years ago, told by callers based in Broward County that they had won a lottery prize of millions of dollars. To collect their money, they just had to cover the cost of shipping, taxes, insurance and customs processing. So they withdrew the money from their bank accounts and paid.

Florida, with its high population of elderly people, has ranked second in the country for elder fraud for at least the fourth year in a row, a newly released FBI report shows, with residents over 60 losing a cumulative total of nearly $300 million in 2023 alone. Even accounting for its larger elderly population, the state ranks in the top 10 for the crimes, according to a recent report by the company VPNPRo that analyzed federal data.

Across the U.S., the crimes are growing, with a total of $3.4 billion lost this year, more than the year before. They’re also becoming increasingly effective and sinister. Romance scams and lottery scams are two of the most popular in recent years, experts say, driving people to financial ruin and even suicide. Yet the crimes are rarely reported. Oftentimes, elderly people are embarrassed about what happened to them or afraid that if they report it, their families will think they are mentally unfit to take care of themselves.

“With older adults, people quickly jump to conclusion they must be slightly mentally declining,” said Karen Murillo, AARP Florida’s associate state director of advocacy, “so it’s time to take control over Mom’s bank accounts, or get guardianship in place, or she can’t live alone anymore.”

Officials estimate that only a fifth of scams are actually reported. Even the FBI’s numbers are lower than what they should be because the agency has the ages of the victims only in about half of the complaints they received.

The numbers “do not fully capture the frauds and scams targeting this vulnerable cross-section of our population,” Michael D. Nordwall, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, wrote in the report released Tuesday.

Between 2020 and 2021, the 51 lottery scam victims ended up losing, cumulatively, over $6.6 million, some of which went to purchase a Mercedes Benz in Jamaica, according to South Florida investigators, which included the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Homeland Security’s Fort Lauderdale office. This past February, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted a man and woman originally from Jamaica with the fraud.

Investment fraud, romance and confidence scams, and tech-support scams are responsible for the biggest financial losses among the elderly, according to new data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, though tech-support scams have by far the greatest number of victims.

Sometimes when the phone call comes, the news is urgent and bad.

“Hello, this is the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department, District 6, Boynton Beach,” one recent voicemail circulating through South Florida begins. “It is very important that you give us a call back in reference to a non-emergency legal matter.”

Any victim who called back would have been told they had a failure to appear or a contempt of court warrant for their arrest and would have to pay up to $5,000. A nearly identical scam is unfolding across Broward County, with people impersonating Sheriff’s Office employees.

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The scams occur multiple times a year. Inevitably, some residents fall for them; over 300 elderly people were victims of “government impersonation” last year, according to the FBI data.

Experts say the scams are ever-evolving and the amount of money lost is increasing. In Florida, total money lost decreased slightly this year from last year, in which the state’s elderly lost over $300 million, but is up significantly from 2021 and over three times the amount lost in 2020, according to the FBI data.

Total monetary losses tend to be higher for older adults, Murillo said, even though studies show that people in their 30s are actually victimized more often. Scammers also target the elderly more because they know they tend to be wealthier and have more readily available assets, sometimes including their own homes.

The rise of social media and dating apps have paved the way for romance scams that often employ catfishing over long periods of time in order to convince the victim that the relationship is real. The elderly can become easy prey, particularly those who are isolated, or experiencing grief or hardship.

The mainstream narrative depicts the elderly as naïve or foolish, easily “duped” into the scams, something that likely contributes to their reluctance to report them.

“It’s part of our colloquialism to say somebody ‘fell for’ a scam,” said Murillo, who is also a former prosecutor of elder fraud crimes. “We don’t blame victims of a mugging. We’re not blaming the victim in that situation. With a physical crime, we’re looking at the criminal and how could the criminal do this.”

Romance scams and lottery scams are some of the most insidious because people don’t want to believe what is happening to them is a lie in addition to the potential embarrassment. Scammers will tell their victims to expect those around them to be skeptical when they say they need to send thousands of dollars to a pretend person in need.

“These people are grooming their victims,” said Murillo. “They’re going through and calling them daily, having long conversations.”

She recalled one case in which a scammer identified with their victim’s background and struggles, telling her things like “I’m gonna call you ‘auntie,’ I feel like you are my auntie, you remind me of her.”

In the aftermath of these kinds of scams, victims are left devastated. Often, on top of losing someone they thought they loved, they have lost their entire life savings, fallen out with family members. That money is rarely returned, even when the victims report the fraud.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office still hasn’t caught whoever is impersonating their deputies, spokeswoman Teri Barbera said Thursday. In fact, almost all of the recent scams are still active investigations.

“If we had an arrest, we’d definitely let you know,” she said.

In Broward, the same scam occurring now had taken place last August with no arrest announced by the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

“Sadly, this scam is not new,” spokesperson Carey Codd wrote in a news release two weeks ago.

Still, local agencies continue to educate residents, particularly the elderly, to try to stop the scams from claiming victims. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office’s volunteer team, VAST, travels to neighborhoods to meet with residents about financial crimes, Barbera said. In Miramar, police have held scam-awareness-themed bingo nights and fashion shows at senior centers to help people identify real law enforcement uniforms.

Like Murillo, Miramar Police spokeswoman Tania Ordaz said that embarrassment often stops elderly people from reporting, and officers have to remind them it’s not because they weren’t “smart enough.”

“If they have been scammed or are a victim of fraud they need to remember, they need to report this,” Ordaz said. “They can move from victim to survivor and prevent others from falling prey.”

©2024 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.