Con Artists Use These Scams To Steal Millions From Elderly In NY

NEW YORK – Con artists are scamming New York's elderly out of millions of dollars through phone calls designed to trick them into handing over their cash – with the most commonly used tactic alone making the crooks $6,928,975.

A report by the Senate Special Committee on Aging reveals just how vulnerable people are. Across the country, the rogue calls are estimated to have convinced mostly elderly victims to hand over $42 million over 15 months.

In New York, the most successful trick for the scammers has been to pretend to be from the IRS, the report says. It had raked in nearly $7 million as of the end of January 2018.

Callers accuse their victims of owing back taxes and penalties and threaten home foreclosure, arrest and even deporation if they don't pay up – usually through gift cards, the report says.

High profile arrests did result in the number of these calls significantly decreasing, the report said. But they were immediately replaced by Social Security calls.

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,” Kathy Stokes, the director of AARP’s Fraud Prevention Program, 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, said Randy Brauer of the National Council on Aging.

Other scams most often used in New York include:

• Unsolicited Phone Calls
• Computer Tech Support Scams
• Grandparent Scams
• “Can You Hear Me?” Scam

The “grandparent scam" 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.

“That’s outrageous, isn’t it?” said Stokes. “They were probably asking for relatively small amounts of $500.”

Aging Americans are con artists’ targets of choice partly because they’re seen by scammers as vulnerable, but primarily because of a perception “they’re sitting on piles of money,” said Brauer.

“For people who are relatively well-educated and think they’re savvy, it’s very demoralizing and shameful to admit they fell for something,” Stokes said. “We as a society blame victims of scams in a way we don’t blame other crime victims. We need to flip the narrative — ‘this happened to me and I’m empowered to tell my story so others won’t feel the same embarrassment.’ ”

“Growing up, my mom and dad told me not to talk to strangers,” Stokes said. “It’s time for us to remind our parents to be suspicious and engage their inner skeptic. If the government needs to take action right away, or it’s free, engage your inner skeptic.”

Above all, don’t “yell at your mom for falling for a scam,” said Stokes, who noted the AARP staff is “trained to listen [to calls about elder scams] with empathy and use empathetic words, to remind them they are the victim, this is a very sophisticated kind of scam and that it occurs across demographics.”
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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