Adults 60 and over are being defrauded out of six-figure sums at an alarming rate.
Transcript:
Conway Gittens: Wall Street is on edge over the escalation of military tensions between Ukraine and Russia. Those worries are overshadowing good news at home. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, topped quarterly forecasts and boosted its annual guidance as shopping remained healthy. It was a similar story at do-it-yourself retailer Lowe’s.
Turning to other business headlines. Online scammers are preying on wealthier older Americans at an alarming rate. The number of Americans aged 60 and above who have been scammed out of $100,000 or more in one year tripled from 2020 to 2023.
According to complaints compiled by the Federal Trade Commission, that age group had more than $1.9 billion stolen by fraud in 2023. That figure, however, likely surges to an estimated $62 billion once the FTC considers how many cases go unreported.
Most of the scams are familiar but vulnerable elderly members of the population still fall for them including romantic propositions, emails for help from criminals posing as family members or friends, sweepstakes and lottery scams, and fraudsters are even posing as legitimate agents of the Social Security Administration.
The 60-plus crowd is also particularly falling prey to investment scams involving cryptocurrencies. This is the fastest-growing area for scammers. Older Americans were defrauded of $538 million in 2023, which was a 34 percent increase from the previous year.
But it’s not just the old. According to the FTC, U.S. consumers lost $10 billion to scammers last year. That’s a record high.
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