Frauds used against seniors 1

There is a lot of information about frauds and scams and how to protect yourself. What I found is that there is not a great deal of information about the frauds and scams that target seniors. So, as I was working on creating a workshop on this topic for seniors, I thought I would add the information to the blog. The more you know about frauds and scams, the less chance you have of becoming a victim. Over the next few posts, I will highlight the top 10, (in my opinion) frauds against seniors and how to protect yourself from falling victim to the fraud.

There are many reasons why seniors are vulnerable to fraudsters and scam artists. Here are a few:

·       As a group, we are too trusting; too polite as we were raised in a culture that valued these attributes and so we believe in the best of people.

·       Many seniors are isolated and look forward to any type of interaction with others, so when we start to get phone calls and letters, we welcome them. But after a while, we become worn down by calls and letters so we give the callers and letter writers what they want.

·       Many seniors do not have the experience to be aware that they are a victim of a fraud or a scam.

Fraudsters are very, very convincing; cheating people is their profession and they are well-trained. What follows are the frauds and scams used almost exclusively against seniors. 

The number one fraud is a telephone fraud called, The Grandparent Scam. This fraud is a variation of a class of frauds called Telephone and Email Scams.

What happens is a senior receives a telephone call, and the voice is garbled or hard to hear. The caller identifies themselves as a grandchild or a nephew or niece and talks about the bad connection and then says something along the following lines:

 “Hi, this is your favourite grand(son)(daughter) or nephew/niece.  I need you to send me money (for a flight ticket, rent or bail) but please don’t tell mom.  She’ll be so disappointed in me.”

If you receive a phone call with any request to wire or send money it should immediately raise a red flag, so hang up and report the fraud to the police.

There is a variation of this phone scam called the Bogus bank inspector. The senior is asked to withdraw a large amount of cash from your account to use as evidence. The senior is told not to tell the staff why they are withdrawing money. They are asked to meet the “investigator” at a pre-determined destination where the money is handed over for investigation.

Once the money changes hands, the senior is instructed to return home and wait for a phone call confirming that the money has been re-deposited . . . no call ever comes and they never see their cash again.

Seniors can take steps to protect themselves from this fraud.  My rule is simple, if you have caller ID and do not recognize the number, let it go to voicemail. If you make a mistake and answer the phone, politely say, “I am not interested!” and hang up.

Never give personal information over the phone. Take the time to register on a “Do not call” list.

What do you do at school?

The twins have started pre-school and have been going for a while. We were visiting and so I asked full of curiosity, "What do you do at school?" My follow-up was going to be "How do you like it so far?".

The twins are two rambunctious little boys who love to tear around and they never seem to sit down. However, I was surprised by their answer, which was, " We sit." Their mom reacted very quickly and showed us all of the stuff they were doing. And she talked about how they really like school. The boys did say they liked what they were doing, and they enjoyed playing with their new friends.

I found it interesting that when asked about school, they both responded with the same idea. "We sit." Part of the reason for young children to attend pre-school is to help them socialize and learn skills that they will need in Kindergarten, through to grade 12. One of the first rules is that you cannot run around as much as you want to, you have to sit.

They have learned the first lesson, I wonder if the teachers realize that is what the twins understand about school. School is important and we there is evidence that pre-school is important for the preparation of students when entering grade 1. Socialization is important because in pre-school and kindergarten we learn the rules of life and how to get along with people outside of our immediate family. We also begin to expand our worldview as we see others behaving in ways we may not have been aware. 

A few years ago there was a book called “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. Here is an excerpt from the book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile

at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

·       Share everything.

·       Play fair.

·       Don't hit people.

·       Put things back where you found them.

·       Clean up your own mess.

·       Don't take things that aren't yours.

·       Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

·       Wash your hands before you eat.

·       Flush.

·       Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

·       Live a balanced life - learn some and think some

·       and draw and paint and sing and dance and play

·       and work every day some.

·       Take a nap every afternoon.

·       When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,

·       hold hands, and stick together.

·       Be aware of wonder.

·       Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:

o  The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

o  Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.

o  So do we.

·       And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK. 

·       Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.

·       The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.

·       Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

·       Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or

your world and it holds true and clear and firm.

·       Think what a better world it would be if all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put thing back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

·       And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Your future self

Perhaps the best way to plan for retirement is to visualize your future, really think about the details of who you will be, where and why. Being able to imagine now who you will be in the future and what your needs and desires will be at that time is perhaps the most important aspect of planning.

In psychological circles, the idea of being able to imagine yourself in the future is called “self-continuity.” It is a concept that has been around since at least the ancient Greeks and scientists have discovered that you are better off if you can somehow connect to this future self.

It turns out that visualizing your future does a couple of important things with regards to retirement planning. By connecting with your future self:

·       You can create a better retirement plan — one that suits what you will want to be doing.

·       Helps ensure that you do create a plan and that you do the things you need to do now, saving money, keeping healthy and maintaining friends so that you will have a better future.

Research suggests that our brains naturally process our future selves as strangers. And, let’s face it – you are unlikely to save for the retirement expenses or care for the body of a stranger.  It turns out that by visualizing yourself in the future and “getting to know” that person, you are more likely to take steps now to take care of this future version of yourself.

Whether you are 40 and hoping to retire in 30 years or if you are 67 and hoping you have enough resources to fund the rest of your life, you need to connect to that person and you need to believe that your future self is not a stranger.

Happiness and age

Academics get research grants for many great ideas and we advance the knowledge base of mankind through these research grants. However, there are times when I wonder how or why funding for some grants is approved. Having said that, I find it interesting that experts from Princeton University and the London School of Economics and Political Sciences found that happiness peaks at the ages of 23 and 69.

That may be older than many of you, but it is an age that I have passed and I still am happy, I guess I was also happy at 69 because as we all know happiness does not drop off a cliff and end suddenly!

How did the researchers arrive at their conclusions? Well, they questioned 23,000 volunteers, aged 17 to 85.  The researchers believe these ages are the happiest for us a number of reasons. The three top reasons are:

At 23, you:

have left rigours of education behind.

are embarking on an exciting adult life. 

are earning income.

At 69, you

no longer have the stresses of raising a family.

have retirement to look forward and it represents a new start.

have time for yourself.

I don’t write for 23-year-old adults, I write for the 55+ age group, some of whom are approaching or are over 69. So, my question to that age group is what do you need to do now to ensure that your future is bigger (better, happier, more fulfilling) than your past? Here are some of my ideas

First, create a written retirement plan. It will reduce stress and make you feel better, and more confident about your future.

No matter how tough your circumstances, work and find one little glimmer or hope and happiness. Focus on that. Foster it. And, you’ll probably find that the little spot of goodness will get bigger.

Nurturing your relationships with friends and family and creating new friends has been proven in study after study to be the secret of not only a happy life — but also a longer life.  Loneliness is as big a predictor of an earlier death as smoking!

Have a Purpose: Giving back and feeling part of a community are well recognized as being keys to happiness — especially in old age.

Harvard University’s landmark study of ageing well, found that “generativity” (giving back and participating in your community) tripled the chances that someone would feel joy throughout their seventies.

Do you talk or think about your death? 

My friends and I were talking at the pub about the end of life, as within the last few days, we had five friends who had died. One of my friends said, “we need to think and talk about death more. I think it is important and life-affirming.”

Do you think about death? If you do there is an app just for you? It is called “WeCroak.”  It will send you an alert at 5 random times throughout the day that says, “You are going to die.”

The WeCroak creators say, “a regular practice of contemplating mortality helps us accept what we must, let go of things that don’t matter and honour the things that do.” And, finding happiness by contemplating your mortality is a scientifically backed technique.

My friend and the folks at WeCroak may believe this but there are well over 200 experiments, where individuals have been instructed to imagine themselves dying. In these studies, it was found that if we think about our death, we become more punitive. Thinking about death also increases our nationalistic bias, makes us more prejudiced against other racial, religious and age groups, and leads to other such parochial attitudes.

Taken together, these dozens of studies show that being reminded of death strengthens our ties to the groups we belong to, to the detriment of those who are different from us.

Reminders of death also affect our political and religious beliefs in interesting ways. On the one hand, they polarise us: political liberals become more liberal while conservatives become more conservative. Similarly, religious people tend to assert their beliefs more fervently while nonreligious

Another study out of the University of Missouri found that thoughts of death can lead to decreased militaristic attitudes, better health decisions, increased altruism and helpfulness, and reduced divorce rates.

"According to terror management theory, people deal with their awareness of mortality by upholding cultural beliefs and seeking to become part of something larger and more enduring than themselves, such as nations or religions," said Jamie Arndt, study co-author and professor of psychological sciences. "Depending on how that manifests itself, positive outcomes can be the result.

This research proves that there are two sides to every coin and a glass is always either half full or half empty.  You get to choose what to focus on and focusing on the positive is a sure-fire way to feel happier.