There’s a segment of the U.S. population particularly vulnerable to online and other scams. The 60+ year old community is under attack, and the complaints are on the rise. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports last year saw an 11% rise in complaints of elder fraud over the previous year. It’s now a nearly $3.5 billion criminal scheme to defraud this at-risk group — and it’s only getting worse.

Elder Fraud by The Numbers

The 2023 IC3 Elder Fraud Report takes a deep dive into the problem at hand including the statistics behind fraud victim complaints to the agency. Some of the leading complaint categories include tech support, confidence/romance, and investment. Cryptocurrency fraud also played a significant part with financial losses, including crypto investment scams.

• Age 60+ Complainants: 101,068
• Average Dollar Loss: $33,915
• Lost More Than $100,000: 5,920
• Total Losses: $3,427,717,654
• Total Increase Over Previous Year: 11%
• Cryptocurrency Investment Scam Loss: Over $1.1 billion, 15,000 complaints

Why 60+ = Target

Seniors present a tempting target because many have a financial nest egg that scammers love to crack, with some victims losing their entire savings to scams. Also, seniors tend to be trusting. Remember, it’s a generation that didn’t grow up with technology and that could help explain why tech support and cryptocurrency scams are so successful. The IC3 finds there were 17,696 tech scams and 12,284 crypto scams reported.

Avoiding Elder Fraud

Elder Americans can help keep scam opportunities at a minimum or avoid them altogether. It’s safe to assume there will always be attempts, but knowing ahead of time what a scam looks like and what to do about it is invaluable.

• Limit personal information on Facebook and other social media and never post birthdates, special events or family names. Scammer’s troll these websites for information they can use to pull you into a scam.

• If you don’t recognize a phone number, don’t answer. The same goes for unknown email senders, and never open their attachments.

• Don’t be pressured or scared into acting. Legitimate organizations never use pressure tactics, and the IRS and other agencies will only contact you by mail.

• If you have been scammed, report it immediately to the FBI or IC3, local law enforcement and your financial institution. Consider putting a freeze on your credit report since it can help limit your financial liability, and regularly check your banking statements and credit reports for unusual activity.

• Protect your financial and other accounts by using strong passwords that are a minimum of eight characters and a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. If you suspect an account has been breached, change your password as soon as possible and enable multifactor authentication (MFA) whenever it’s available.