Jenifer’s Shelter Island Journal: Seniors educated on scammers

It’s doubtful that there’s a person reading this article who hasn’t had more than one experience with “scammers” — on the phone, online, door-to-door, etc.

Scamming has been around since before recorded history. It may be, in fact, the actual “oldest profession,” known by many other names, among them fraud, racket, swindle, con, hustle, flimflam, boondoggle, etc. 

With the dawn of personal technology, however, scamming has become a sleazy hallmark of our age.

This past Thursday, Feb. 13, the Shelter Island Public Library hosted a Zoom meeting, “Senior Scams: The Danger Signs,” in order to arm the public, seniors particularly, with information to help protect themselves against the clear and present danger of being scammed.

The presenter was Tom McCann of Senior Services of North America (SSNA), an independent insurance agency based in Melville, N.Y. He guided his small online audience through slides that covered all aspects of scamming. Mr. McCann acknowledged that while everyone is a potential victim of scamming, the senior population is probably most vulnerable for several reasons.

“As people begin to get older, they get may get lonelier and therefore tend to trust people who are ostensibly trying to ‘help’ them,” he said. “Also, many seniors are retired and tend to be home more frequently than those who are still working, making those seniors more accessible. Added to this, some seniors may have certain disabilities that leave them especially vulnerable to attack.”

A contributing factor also seems to be that many seniors are unfamiliar with technology itself, so they click or swipe on something that puts them at further risk.

Mr. McCann went on to cover the nearly endless list of scams, which grows longer every day because advancing technology and our dependence on it encourages new scam iterations.

The old stand-bys include phone scams, where the scammer poses as someone else, asks for personal information and/or requests “payments” to be wired to them; Sweepstakes/Lottery scams where they tell you you’re the winner but first you must send them payment for “fees” attached to the “prize;” Home Improvement scams — usually perpetrated door-to-door — in which the homeowner is convinced that urgent (and unnecessary) repairs must be made with a large down-payment provided before work can begin; Reverse Mortgage scams that involve, in part, the “purposeful misrepresentation of loan terms and/or identity thieves taking out reverse mortgages in your name.”   

The good news (and, at this point we all could use some) is that, according to Mr. McCann, there are many steps you can take to protect yourself — too many to list them all here, but top of the list, along with exercising common sense, is remembering a few important facts.

For instance, neither the IRS nor Medicare will call you directly; if you are unfamiliar with the source of a text or email, do NOT respond, answer or click on anything. If the name is unfamiliar on your caller ID, DON’T answer — if legitimate, they can leave a message with a call back number — but only call back if you feel comfortable.

Other protective measures include using the “Do not call list,” shredding documents, monitoring credit reports, setting alerts on credit cards and bank accounts, and using two-factor authentication.

All through his presentation, Mr. McCann stressed the importance of recognizing “red flags” online, phone calls, or in person, etc. There are three major ones:

1. Scammers will try and create a (false) sense of URGENCY.

2. Scammers will ask for MONEY, and often for your personal information.

3. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

This writer plans to find out if there is a pamphlet available that encompasses all the information Mr. McCann’s slides contain since many helpful specifics couldn’t be included in this brief column. Knowledge really is power in this case. We all are potential targets without it. These criminals are as resourceful as they are despicable.

As I began writing this column, my mother-in-law — turning 104 today — called me, very upset. Someone, posing as me, called to tell her that she’d been in an accident and was slated to be released from rehab, but she couldn’t pay the bill … my mother-in-law hung up.