From annoying calls during dinner or strange texts from unfamiliar numbers.

Scammers have likely had you in their sights.

If you're not careful, you could be tricked out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars and have your identity compromised.

Fraudsters use clever, sometimes overly friendly, or at times downright aggressive and even threatening approaches, and being trapped by their schemes can come at a hefty cost.

Heather Clary, with the Better Business Bureau of Greater Kentucky and Southern Indiana, tells us what to look out for and says that seniors are less gullible than you might think, but still wind up doling out more when they're victimized.

This is part of our ongoing aging series The Next Chapter, that explores the rewards and challenges of growing older.

The Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker report from 2024 indicates that of all the scams that were reported and fallen for, unfortunately across the nation, fewer of the seniors actually fell for the scams.

However, when they did, they lost more money than other age groups.

So yeah, you could chalk that up to been a alive for a long time and know what to look for or any number of things.

So that was an interesting point.

And that happens from year to year, but it's still a problem.

They can fall for scams and lose quite a bit of money in different ways.

And that's why we do want to reach out, help them help their their caretakers, their family members, whoever that can help them keep their money in their pockets and continue into their senior years without worrying.

And to your point, and we're going to put this on the screen that ages 65 and up, 41.9% susceptibility for falling for these scams, but ages 55 to 64, a little bit more 45.1%.

So but to your point, if you're 65 and older and you have fallen for one of these scams, you lose 160 bucks on average, as opposed to someone younger by five, six, ten years, $125.

So if you're losing these at home.

So yeah, but again, we want to keep that from happening.

And that's why again, the Better Business Bureau can be such a proactive step for folks to take to avoid those types of scams.

And if someone has fallen for one of these, it's also an opportunity to reach out for resources and possibilities to mitigate it, keep it from happening further so that it doesn't get worse.

And our services are free, and we want to make people aware of that.

And we don't want anyone to hesitate, to call us to be ashamed or embarrassed.

I mean, that's why we're here.

Yeah.

And we'll often hear from family members of an older person stating, you know, my grandmother or my dad or whoever it is is getting some suspicious phone calls.

They're receiving weird things in the mail.

They're writing an awful lot of checks for a sweepstakes prize.

They say they want any number of things, like that.

And we've learned to recognize those.

And we're happy to talk to those folks and see if we can help them, help their family member.

Let's talk about some of the common scams that tend to target the elderly.

Are they different than a younger population?

They can vary.

For instance.

One of the most reported scams, believe it or not, in 2024 was the cryptocurrency.

An investment scam?

And there are seniors out there who might have a nice retirement nest egg.

And those con artists want to get their hands on it.

And cryptocurrency is still very mysterious to a lot of folks and complicated even though it's been out there for some time.

And they can be led down the primrose path, as they say, to invest your money.

It's a sure thing.

Would I lie to you?

You know, that kind of thing.

And so they can tend to lose money to any of those investments scams and not be able to recover that, especially if those people just ghost them and disappear.

Well, and we've heard and in fact a program we did we profiled someone who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yes.

Right.

And and actually, you know, when you hear the story that the person had kind of they kind of met each other.

I mean, it was like this, you know, there were all kinds of signs that pointed to this being a nefarious scheme.

But yet, you know, the senior now in the back end realizes that.

But at the time, really thought it was legitimate.

I mean, these are really good con artists.

They are very good at it.

And anymore, you and I and artificial intelligence and those types of technologies can make it even easier to right someone fall for something.

For instance, another scam, the grandparent scam or emergency call scam.

They can happen in different ways, but it does hit seniors a lot where the person poses as a grandchild in some sort of trouble or distress.

We've heard the tales of I'm on spring break with a bunch of folks and we were in a car accident.

Now we're in a jail in Florida somewhere and they think they want to arrest us.

I need some bail money.

And please don't tell Mom and Dad, right?

That kind of sounds legit.

Yeah, and, you know, the grandparent wants to help out, once in a while.

I mean, we'll have these folks tell us.

Well, us.

You didn't sound like him too much, and they'll give you a reason.

Like.

Well, we were in a car accident, and I hit my nose on the dashboard, and so that's why I don't sound the same.

Or.

Wow.

I mean, they make up all the reasons where I've been crying, and.

But they're quick to hand that phone over to an attorney, so to speak.

If you can just give some financial information to this guy, he'll get me out of this and I'll be fine, you know?

And then that's when they want the untraceable payment methods.

You know, the PayPal, the Venmo or the Cash App.

They want gift cards that you buy loaded with money.

Those are all big red flags.

Call the parents.

They say, don't call mom and dad.

Do it.

Or whoever else you can.

Or if you have a cell number for the child or whoever it is, call them directly.

See if it's true.

You're going to find out it isn't some really good advice there.

And here's some more.

Be leery of free low cost or buy one get one deals or request for unusual payment types like the prepaid debit or credit cards and wired funds, and hang up on solicitors who pressure you to act now for more information on how to protect you and your loved ones from these scams, check out scams sky.gov.

And I'll have more with Heather Clary next week.

When we talk about Medicare scams, especially during this time of open enrollment that starts soon.