North Cook News

Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-Westmont) recently hosted a webinar focusing on senior citizens and fraud, with guest Tom Brady, director of the Homeland Security Institute at the College of DuPage.

“Many of the residents of my district are really concerned about being targeted by people who are looking to engage in fraud or involved in various types of scams. These scams can take on various forms, and one of the best ways to protect yourself is to know how to avoid them,” said Mazzochi  before she turned the meeting over to Brady.

Throughout the nearly-hour long webinar, which was uploaded to the Illinois House GOP Youtube account on April 27, Brady outlined common scams that target older individuals and also laid out what they (and their family members) can do to reduce the likelihood that they (or their loved ones) will find themselves victim of scams or identity theft.

“The best thing to fight fraud is education, it’s knowing what someone attempting to scam you or defraud you [might do],” Brady said.

And during the pandemic, these con artists definitely worked their angles.

“With millions of Americans out of work and struggling to make ends meet, scammers took full advantage of consumers’ struggles in 2020,” Brady said.

A scam that became common and connects to COVID-19 are COVID cleaning scams, where individuals might call claiming to be professional cleaners or to represent professional cleaners, and offer to sanitize homes or businesses.

“There are businesses that specialize in this service, but they don’t randomly call people,” Brady said.

Other COVID-19 related scams include cure scams, where businesses try to sell their existing product as a preventative or cure for COVID-19 and the coronavirus.

“The FTC and FDA have issued warnings against seven companies that the agencies say have been misbranding products as treatments or preventatives for COVID-19,” Brady said.

He also said to watch out for people coming door-to-door and saying they have COVID-19 inspections, selling fake decontamination services, or posing as government officials and offering information about stimulus checks or unemployment benefits.

“If there is more than one person at your door, close it immediately and call the police,” Brady said.

The Grandparent Scam is continuing to make the rounds – and this one works because it appeals to a senior citizen’s emotions, as many successful scams do, according to Brady. In this scenario, scammers call an older adult and say something like “HI Grandma, it’s me!” or “Hi Grandpa, I need money for a COVID test,” and then they play along, using information the victim supplies (like their grandchild’s name, for example). The caller will likely ask to keep the situation between the “grandchild” and the grandparent, because their parents would be upset if they knew.

One way to protect against this particular scam, Brady said, is to have a family password, and for the older adults to not be afraid to ask for it when they’re not sure if they’re actually talking to their family member.

Romance scams are popular and commonly target older individuals, for a variety of reasons – Brady says they’re often vulnerable and looking for companionship. These scams typically start online and sound innocent enough, until a scammer feels they’ve gained the victim’s trust, when they start pressuring victims for money.

He also discussed the warning signs of other common scams, like the Nigerian letter/email scams,  and a variety of other internet scams and work from home scams.

Brady also touched on identity theft scams – particularly when it comes to COVID-19 and unemployment, this type of scam is still prevalent.  This happens when a perpetrator uses malware or computer intrusion techniques to steal personally identifiable information and assume someone’s identity – which they may then use to collect unemployment benefits. The victim, who may not even be unemployed, may not know about this type of scam until they receive a letter from the state, or are contacted by their employer about their claim, Brady said.

Seniors lose approximately $2.9 billion each year from these kinds of scams, Brady said, and those who are 60 and older are less likely to report it.

To protect yourself from these scams, Brady offers these tips:

• When in doubt, delete, delete, delete.
• Don’t respond to robocalls.
• Do your research if something sounds interesting.
• Don’t be pressured into sending money or providing personal identifying information.
• Call the police, even if you weren’t successfully scammed.
• Contact your state and local law enforcement, like the District Attorney’s office and State’s Attorney General.
• Report the scam attempt to the FTC, which maintains a database of scams that are making the rounds.

“You might need a police report to prove that you were a victim,” said Brady.