Older adults are disproportionately targeted by scammers and fraudsters while facing little or no protection.
91-year-old Loris Sinanian from Blairsville, Georgia reportedly lost more than six figures after being scammed by someone posing as an old friend who wanted to pay off a $100 debt, Atlanta News First Reports.
After making contact with Sinanian, the scammer gained remote access to his computer, then made it appear as if he had mistakenly sent $100,000 to Sinanian instead of $100.
Over the course of 10 days, the fraudster convinced Sinanyan to withdraw $109,000 in cash from his bank accounts, place the cash in boxes of books and then ship the boxes to an unknown address in New York.
Al-Sinani says
“I don’t want to use profanity, but I was so unhappy that I was stupid enough to continue.”
Debra Stokes, executive director of the Georgia Council on Aging, a high-profile state-funded advocacy group, told ANF that “there are hundreds of cases like this across the county,” and thousands of cases reported statewide each year.
In 2023 Elder fraud reportThe FBI said seniors lost $3.4 billion to scams alone, though the number likely greatly understates the true scale of the problem.
An 85-year-old woman’s life savings were recently drained by scammers posing as JPMorgan and the US government. Annette Maness, a widowed social worker, was the victim of a scheme that drained $1.4 million over 279 days, but JPMorgan refused to compensate her.
Late last year, Françoise Schoroch fell victim to a “Hey Dad” scheme in which scammers pretend to be the grandchild of an elderly person asking for help.
In Shorosh’s case, hackers accessed her emails while she was purchasing her first home.
“I was sharing discussions about the business with solicitors, surveyors and estate agents. I was keeping him informed of all the financial matters, and getting his advice as this was my first purchase. I suspect someone gained access to our email exchange and then reached out to him directly .
Using Shorosh’s email address – but using “email.com” instead of “gmail.com” – the scammers were able to contact her father without raising suspicion, eventually convincing him to transfer 7,000 euros, or about $9,100, from Deutsche Bank to a national bank. account.
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