Scammers have stolen more than $3.4 billion from older Americans in 2023, using increasingly sophisticated tactics, according to a recent FBI report.
The losses to Americans over the age of 60 increased 11 percent from 2022, with transnational scammers now even sending couriers to collect cash or gold from the victims in person, according to the report released Tuesday.
In one of the most common tactics, scammers call an elderly person and say they are from his or her bank, from tech support, or from the government and that the individual’s bank account has been hacked. The elderly person might panic, knowing that hacks could happen through his or her e-banking system.
The criminal then says to the owner of the account to transfer all the money to another account controlled by the scammers. If the owner seems hesitant, they will tell him that he should liquify his account or buy physical gold with the money, and a courier will come to receive the cash or gold in person.
Unfortunately, more than 100,000 people over the age of 60 trusted the scammers, lost money, and filed complaints to the FBI, according to the report. This means that each person lost $33,000 on average, given that the total lost was $3.4 billion.
However, these losses to older Americans are likely an undercount. Only about half of the more than 880,000 complaints reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year included information on the age of the victim.
“It can be a devastating impact to older Americans who lack the ability to go out and make money,” said Deputy Assistant Director James Barnacle of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “People lose all their money. Some people become destitute.”
Nearly 6,000 people over the age of 60 lost more than $100,000, according to the FBI report. It follows a sharp rise in reported losses by older Americans in the two years after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when people were stuck at home and easier for scammers to reach over the phone.
Mr. Barnacle said investigators are seeing organized, transnational criminal enterprises targeting older Americans through a variety of schemes, like romance scams and investment frauds.
“A lot of the the fraud schemes are asking victims to send money via a wire transfer, or a cryptocurrency transfer. When the victim is reluctant to do that, they’re given an alternative, and so the bad guy will use courier services,” Mr. Barnacle said.
Earlier this month, an 81-year-old Ohio man fatally shot an Uber driver he thought was trying to rob him after receiving scam phone calls, according to authorities.
The man had been receiving calls from someone pretending to be an officer from the local court who demanded money. The Uber driver had been told to retrieve a package from the man’s home, a request authorities say was possibly made by the same scam caller or an accomplice.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
