By Joan Aragone
San Mateo County Times
08/17/2009
IMAGINE YOURSELF leaving a rehab or long-term care facility to recuperate at home. Once there, the driver helps you inside, and that afternoon there's a knock on the door.
A friendly person says he has been sent by the facility to help at home. You invite him in. How convenient! You need assistance, and here it is.
Payment is discussed. Maybe you write a check. And one of the newest variations of elder fraud is under way.
"It's my biggest peeve," said Melissa McKowan, deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, referring to the relatively recent practice of scammers tracking people coming out of long-term care facilities.
"These people wait outside the hospital and follow the transportation vehicle to the home," said McKowan, a member of her department's Elder Fraud Unit. "Then they ring the bell and claim to be sent by the hospital or facility to provide in-home care. They quote an inflated price ... and get into the house. And they go on from there."
What happens next varies, but the client rarely benefits.
This latest twist reflects
increasingly brazen patterns of local elder abuse. Meanwhile, at the international level, McKowan noted increasingly complex telephone pyramid schemes and solicitations from all over the world using sophisticated methods to block identification.
McKowan advises the elderly at home to keep visitors outside unless they know or expect them.
"Keep them at the door and tell them you will get back to them and check," she said. "If you're leaving a hospital and the hospital says it will send a caregiver, you should still check. Normally, the patient calls the caregiver."
Abridged
SOURCE: San Mateo County Times
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