Annually, an estimated 3.5 million retirees fall victim to financial exploitation. Scammers take advantage of elders due their vulnerability. Those who are 80+ are the most at-risk group for scammers. Ruthless and always on top of trends and the latest news, scammers will try to pull a fast one via the phone, targeted emails, or even through websites.

Why are seniors targeted more than any other age group?

Money, Money, Money
With decades of saving and planning, elders are more particularly targeted due to being the wealthier, more established society members. Also, more likely to have own their homes outright, elder Americans have approximately 1.7 times the wealth than the working middle class due to their savings.

Loneliness Leads to Vulnerability
Retirees are usually empty nesters, and oftentimes loneliness leads to isolation as family grows and friends get older, too. This makes the perfect breeding ground for con artists to build a relationship with elders especially telephone scammers. Elders are always happy to get a call and are more than willing to listen to their narratives. Once the scammer can gain the retirees trust they have an easier time exploiting.

Cognitive Issues
Unfortunately, with aging comes cognitive decline. Even though seniors are reporting scams more often than younger folks, they have a harder time remembering the little details necessary. What makes matters worse is that seniors do not realize that they were scammed until sometimes weeks after the fact. Memory loss presents first with haziness, and short-term memory is the first to experience issues.

Other Health Issues Make Easy Targets
Easy for health scams, seniors are more likely to have other health issues such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and limited mobility. The health scams will target retirees with fake remedies for these issues since they are seen as personal.

Retirement Staples
​As the baselines to retirement, Medicare and Social Security are very important to seniors to maintain their health and finances. If a call or email comes through for these programs talking about issues elders are very prone to panic. The panic-inducing targeting gets retirees to act out of fear for losing their benefits or insurance. Retirees are more likely to share their information to scammers when something that important is threatened.