Safeguarding Against Senior Scams

Dementia family coach Faith Marshall joins Suzanne to talk about how to protect ourselves from senior scams. First, get seniors to be open with their families. Working with banks, online banking, helps with fraud alerts and unusual charges. Neighbors are a big help, if they see contractors or other unusual people arriving at the door. We have to be watchdogs for our families. You can have the bank set up an account with limited funds in it, rather than having a debit card that accesses an account with $50,000 in it, while funds can easily be added to it when needed. A caregiver could have a second card for the account.

Faith shares more scam stories. She shared a second scam that her parents experienced about six months after an earlier one. “Somebody knocked on the door right after dad left to go for a walk, and they knew their name. So they told mom, “Walt wants us to fix the roof. Is he here?” Well, they knew he wasn’t. And so then she told them he wasn’t there, and wound up getting in the car with them, and going with them up to the bank to get $2,500. She was in the early stages of dementia, and she was scared, but she was afraid of what would happen if she didn’t follow through. She didn’t understand why they didn’t come into the bank with her. Well, it’s all the security cameras, and they waited in the car. She felt very comfortable with them and, uh, came back to the house, and the guy took a two by four and shoved it up through the covered porch to show her that it was rotten, and it needed to be fixed, and created that sense of need. 

“Then when the police report was filed, and the police came, they’re the ones who alerted us to the fact that there is a whole network. It was not the same people, totally different people, different faces for her. After that point, mom was a lot more receptive to having our help with the finances and changing the bank account and adding a signer. So I was a signer for one of her accounts, as my brother was a signer for another account. So when the bank called, we could put a stop on something that was happening.”

AARP’s Fraud Watch Network Helpline is at 877-908-3360. Learn more at Faith Marshall’s AFE page and at dementiafamilycoaching.com. You can email Faith at faith@faithmarshall.com or call her directly at (855) 363-2484.

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Answers For Elders