Recognizing Elder Financial Abuse. What to Know and What to Do.

Recognizing Elder Financial Abuse. What to Know and What to Do.

Imagine a family member offers to buy groceries for an elderly grandparent. The family member uses the grandparent’s debit card to buy groceries while also buying many items for their own personal use with the debit card without the grandparent’s permission.

Now, imagine a person has authorized access to an older friend’s bank account to help pay bills, insurance, and rent, but instead the bills and rent go unpaid and insurance is canceled.

Both the scenarios above are examples of elder financial abuse, also called elder financial exploitation. Financial loss is just one consequence of this type of abuse. It can also cause emotional harm, physical health problems and even a shorter life expectancy.

How common is financial abuse of seniors?

According to the State Bar of Wisconsin (wisbar.org), a professional association for attorneys, created by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, financial exploitation is the largest category of elder abuse in Wisconsin after self-neglect. The American Bankers Association reports that people over the age of 50 control over 70% of the nation’s wealth. That’s a lot of wealth for potential scammers to take advantage of and social engineering is just one tactic used by scammers.

Social Engineering

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports that social engineering crimes in the 60+ age group is the fastest growing victim age group. According to the group’s 2022 Elder Fraud Report, Wisconsin ranked the 25^th state in terms of reported number of victims (1,029) over the age of 60 who fell prey to these crimes. Sadly, a number of these types of crimes go unreported. Wisconsin’s losses for this age group totaled $31,024,115.

Social engineering scams include tech support, investment, lottery/sweepstakes, romance scams, extortion, non-payment, and crypto currency scams. Investment scams topped the list in the amount of money lost ($990,235,119) for victims over age 60. Scammers will pressure seniors into providing access to their retirement accounts, the equity of their home, or even convince them to invest in fraudulent schemes. Victims can lose their entire life savings which can be devastating when they may already be living on a limited income.

Senior financial abuse costs victims over 3 billion dollars a year nationwide according to the FBI. Sadly, some financial abuse of elders not only comes from strangers and online scams, but also from family members or friends.

What is Elder Financial Abuse?

Elder financial abuse can come in many forms including:

• Obtaining a person’s money or property by deceiving or enticing them, or by forcing them to give money/property or sell property without their informed consent.
• Neglecting to fulfill an assigned fiscal responsibility like paying rent or mortgage, medical bills, insurance, household bills, or taxes.
• Using an elderly person’s identity including their social security number or forging a signature or using identification documents without authorization.
• Transacting with an elderly person’s debit or credit card without authorization.

A person’s independence is compromised when their financial resources are deprived or taken advantage of. As a caregiver, family member, or friend it’s important to check in with your loved one, and watch for signs of financial exploitation.

How do you protect your loved ones from financial abuse?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outlines 4 steps to protect your loved ones from financial abuse.

1. Prevent
2. Recognize
3. Record
4. Report

Prevent

Prevention starts with knowledge. Educate yourself and your community on financial abuse and keep up to date with the latest in financial scams involving phone, email, social media or other technology. Keep in touch with your elderly loved ones if they live far away and discuss any problems or concerns they might be having.

The Federal Trade Commission has materials through their Pass it On campaign that they encourage you to share with friends and family. Materials include information on the latest in identity theft scams, health insurance scams, sweepstakes scams, investment scams and more.

Banking tools can be a helpful resource in preventing financial abuse.

Prevail Bank has existing technology that can help in the prevention of financial fraud. Setting up automatic Account Alerts with Prevail’s online banking or mobile banking app can be a great way to help identify any suspicious activity. Get notifications of every transaction or whenever an account falls below a certain amount.

Bill Pay, available in Prevail’s online banking, is another beneficial tool that can help in preventing unauthorized access to an account. Set up automatic payments direct from a checking or savings account.

Identity theft protection through ID TheftSmart is available for a small monthly fee at Prevail. If your identity is ever stolen, ID TheftSmart professionals step in as your advocate, fully committed to quickly restoring your identity to pre-theft status.

Credit Sense is FREE and available in online and mobile banking for customers at Prevail. It provides you with Credit report monitoring and real-time alerts.

Prevail Bank team members can help you set up these easy-to-use tools and answer any questions you might have. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

Recognize

What are the signs of elder financial abuse?

Signs of financial exploitation of your senior loved one can include:

• becoming withdrawn or agitated when asked about financial matters.

• having unexplained expenses or financial losses.
• getting notices of late or unpaid bills.
• suddenly changing spending habits.
• changing powers of attorney, wills or other legal documents without explanation.
• getting medical bills for services they did not receive
• not having daily needs met.
• showing signs of any other type of abuse.

If you have access and manage a family member’s checking or savings account, there are some specific warning signs that you can watch for. If you see any of these occurrences, consider finding out more about the situation and ask for help.

• Many checks made out to “cash”, or checks are continually used out of number order.
• Expensive or frequent gifts are made to people that are not familiar to your loved one or yourself.
• Your loved one sells valuable items unexpectedly.
• Checks or other documents are signed when your loved one is no longer able to write.
• You see different versions of your loved one’s signature.
• You see credit or debit card charges for items that are out of the ordinary

Record

What do you do if you suspect financial abuse of a senior?

Depending on what type of financial abuse you suspect, keeping detailed notes of who, what, when and where the incident took place will be beneficial. If a loved one has been the victim of a scam, recording the dates they were contacted, the methods of payment, where funds were sent, names and any documented communications will be beneficial. Having a paper trail may be able to help in any case.

Report

The proper authorities should be contacted right away in any case of elder financial abuse so that steps can be taken in a timely manner to help the elderly person. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services lists contact information for an elder agency that will look into reports of financial exploitation and other forms of elder abuse. Information can be found here: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/aps/ear-agencies.htm

Wisconsin has an elder abuse hotline 1-833-586-0107 where you can talk to someone about suspected abuse of an elder (age 60 or over).

If any form of fraud is suspected, be sure to contact your loved one’s financial institution so proper steps can be taken.

As with any form of fraud, your best line of defense is knowledge. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) developed a guide for preventing elder financial exploitation called Money Smart for Older Adults. You can download a PDF here.

As a reminder, Prevail Bank will never reach out to you for your account number, PIN or password. Be sure to take a look at the information at Banks Never Ask That for more information on how you can protect yourself from fraud.