Attorney General warns seniors about scammers
By: JOE LANGDON
09/29/2008
HONEY BROOK - State Attorney General Tom Corbett brought his Senior Crime University program to Tel Hai retirement home to help educate senior citizens about the risks of scams and identity theft.
"We like to prevent crime, rather than react to it," Corbett said. "Seniors are targets of scammers. They're trusting people."
With more older people using the Internet, the potential for fraud has grown exponentially, Corbett said. When he asked how many people regularly used computers, nearly every hand in the room went up.
It was back in 1991 that Corbett first encountered the infamous Nigerian scam. It's pretty simple: You receive a letter saying you've won a lottery, or received an inheritance or a beleaguered African monarch needs your help spiriting gold out of a war-torn land. The upshot is that they need money, on the quick, for taxes, fees, customs, etc.
This old doozie is still going strong."I've seen the London Lotto, the Bahamas Bonanza, the Irish Sweeps ..." said David Shallcross, community liaison for the district attorney's office, who led a presentation to the Tel Hai community. Just last week, a Carlisle woman was bilked out of $11,000 in a Canadian lottery scam, he said.
Once people have fallen for a minor scam, the hits keep coming, Shallcross warned. He fanned out a thick stack of mail. It contained over $11 million dollars in bogus checks mailed to one scam victim in just one week."They share information," Shallcross said. "The bad guys network. It's practically organized crime."
In one common variation of the scam, victims receive a check as payment for something sold online, but the check is for more than the sale price. People are asked to wire the difference to a third party for shipping or some other fee. The check bounces and the criminal skips out with the wired funds.
Shallcross said that if anyone suspects fraudulent activity, they should contact the attorney general's office. The office maintains a special elder abuse hot line: 1-866-623-2137. More information is available at www.attorneygeneral.gov.
©Tri County Record 2008
Abridged
SOURCE: Tri County Record
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