The largest number of fraud victims

The 2023 Senior Citizens Fraud Report states that the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 100,000 reports of financial fraud against seniors over the age of 60 last year, a 14% increase from 2022; the total amount of fraud exceeded $3.4 billion, an increase of nearly 11%. Nearly 6,000 victims lost more than $100,000.

The actual number of victims and the losses they suffered may exceed the reported data. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 880,000 reports of suspected fraud last year, of which only about half provided the age of the victims when reporting the case.

James Barnacle, one of the heads of the FBI's criminal investigation division, said that investigators have found that some organized transnational criminal organizations have set up a variety of scams for American elderly people, among which the most common is the "technical support" scam. In such cases, criminals pretend to be technical support personnel or customer service personnel to call the elderly to defraud, for example, telling the victim that their bank account has been hacked by foreign hackers and that in order to prevent funds from being stolen, the account balance needs to be transferred to a designated account. In fact, this designated account is controlled by the scammer. Nearly 18,000 elderly reporters are victims of this type of fraud.

Federal investigators found that when the victim hesitated and was unwilling to transfer money, the criminals would suggest that the victim withdraw cash or use the account balance to buy precious metals such as gold and hand them over to them for safekeeping, and find a courier to collect the cash or gold at their door.

According to the Associated Press, an 81-year-old man in Ohio shot and killed an online ride-hailing driver in April, which may have been caused by this type of fraud. The elderly man received a TELL claiming to be from the Area Court asking for money, while the online ride-hailing driver who was shot received a customer's request to pick up a package at the elderly man's home. Investigators said that the door-to-door pickup service may be ordered by the scammer who called the elderly or his accomplices.

Investment scams that use low risk and high returns as bait are the type of scams that will cause the most losses to American seniors in 2023, with losses exceeding $1.2 billion.