The elderly lose billions a year to scammers — and you may be at a loss on how to protect them. It’s a common concern among the boomer-aged children of the oldest Americans.
In many scams, your parents may be targeted more often than other age groups and fall victim more often, too. And once burned, they may be hit up again as easy marks.
All this is made easier for the scammers if you live elsewhere, unable to run interference on incoming phone calls, emails and mailed letters from con artists. Giving your parents stern warnings or demanding power of attorney to control their finances may seem like the way to go — but often those tactics come with nasty emotional fallout.
“When protectors take over finances or lecture parents about their mistake, it plays right into the scammers’ hands by threatening the target’s independence,” says Anthony Pratkanis, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and coauthor of Weapons of Fraud with AARP’s Douglas Shadel. “For scam victims to admit they were wrong means they’re stupid and unable to take care of themselves,” Shadel said.
So how can you help without hurting their feelings? Here are four approaches that might work:
1. Don’t just tell your parent to hang up or throw out the letter. Have a talk about why. You can’t win a contest you didn’t enter, Dad. You never have to pay fees to collect lottery winnings, Mom. Government agencies don’t make unsolicited phone calls and never ask for personal information — why would they? They’ve already got it on file.
