Peabody Banker Aims To Help Curb North Shore's Growing Scam Epidemic

PEABODY, MA — Allisa King has seen up close the pain that online and phone scammers can bring to residents of the North Shore from her position as a professional banker.

The Peabody resident and her colleagues have regular training on the "red flags" to look for when a customer is potentially being victimized — customers, often older ones, seemingly in a panic as they withdraw large amounts of money in conflict with their typical banking habits — but when the scam is successful the fallout can be brutal.

"I have spent time crying with customers," King told Patch. "It hurts them emotionally. Then it extends to the family because they worry about them and they don't trust them to answer the phone anymore."

King decided it was time for her to take a more active role in helping her customers and the community with her new initiative Senior Tech Safety where she intends to talk with residents — especially members of the North Shore senior community — on the warning signs, pitfalls and what to do to prevent falling victim to one of the common online or phone scams.

"It's just rapidly changing," King said. "Tech is growing so fast. I am only 35 years old and I can barely keep up with what's going on. I can't imagine being 60 or 70 years old having to pay a bill online for the first time when you have spent your life just sending in a check.

"But from what I see in the bank community, knowing the scams active on the North Shore and from my personal knowledge about how people can take steps, I think I can help."

She said she has even seen seniors talking on the phone with scammers as they walk into her Peabody branch and that the fraudsters have become experts in "masking" phone numbers to make it appear that it is coming from law enforcement or a bank. She said there is an especially prevalent Medicare scam that is actively targeting seniors in the area of late.

"One thing we tell people is that if a bank does call you they know who they are calling," she said of scammers sending out "authentication codes" that give them access to a victim's money.

Other common scams include the "grandparents scam" when older residents are urged to send money to help a grandchild or younger relative who is in trouble with the law or needs medical care, phishing scams that try to get people to click on links to fix a problem with their utility, store or shipping service account such as Amazon, and the IRS scam where someone claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service demands money to pay a debt to the government to avoid large fines or imprisonment.

King said she has found she can help seniors and their families navigate technical perils with anyone — except for her own mother — which is exactly the point. While families want to help their parents and grandparents safely learn new technology and avoid scams, King said sometimes the kind voice of a professional who comes across without judgment can be the best way to present the message.

One of King's first public Senior Tech Safety seminars is set for the Peabody Public Library on Lynn Street on Oct. 10 from 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. with up to 20 seats available. Advanced registration is available through the Peabody Public Library and by emailing King at aking@seniortechsafety.org.

She said she has already been contacted to do a similar talk in Lynn and is up for doing so at other libraries and senior centers across the North Shore, as well as personal sessions as requested.

"The devastation that these scams and fraud causes to them and their families, it hurts my soul," King said. "It's just a rapidly growing problem that I can only see getting worse. It's almost like anti-bullying in my eyes.

"These scams can cause months of trauma for a family for just a click of a button on the other side of a keyboard."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)