INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Authors: Super UserA financial services firm estimates seniors lose as much as $36.5 billion a year (Representational)
Marjorie Jones trusted the man who called to tell her she'd won a
sweepstakes prize, saying she could collect the winnings once she paid the taxes and fees
After she wired the first payment, he and other callers kept adding conditions to convince her to send more money.As the scheme progressed,
Jones, who was legally blind and lived alone in a two-story house in Moss Bluff, Louisiana, depleted her savings, took out a reverse
mortgage and cashed in a life insurance policy
She didn't tell her family, not even the sister who lived next door
Scammers often push victims to keep promised winnings a secret, says an investigator who helped unravel this sinister effort to exploit an
82-year-old woman.Her family didn't realize something was wrong until she started asking to borrow money, a first for a woman they admired
for her financial independence
But by then it was too late, says Angela Stancik, one of Jones's granddaughters
Jones had lost all of her life savings-hundreds of thousands of dollars.About one week after calling Stancik at the family business in
Ganado, Texas, to borrow $6,000, Jones committed suicide.That was May 4, 2010
When family members went to her home, they found a caller-ID filled with numbers they didn't recognize and three bags of wire transfer
Jones had $69 left in her bank account.Some 5 million older Americans are financially exploited every year by scammers like the ones who
The elderly are also suffering at the hands of greedy, desperate or drug addicted relatives and friends, among others
The total number of victims is increasing as baby boomers retire and their ability to manage trillions of dollars in personal assets
One financial services firm estimates seniors lose as much as $36.5 billion a year
But assessments like that are "grossly underestimated," according to a 2016 study by New York State's Office of Children and Family Services
For every case reported to authorities, as many as 44 are not
The study found losses in New York alone could be as high as $1.5 billion.The U.S
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drew attention to elder exploitation as a public health problem in a 2016 report, citing
groundbreaking research two decades earlier by Mark Lachs
Now co-chief of the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Lachs says
elder abuse victims-including those who suffer financial exploitation-die at a rate three times faster than those who haven't been abused
It's a "public health crisis," he warns."I knew these crimes were killing people," says Elizabeth Loewy, who directed the elder abuse unit
at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office
As her exploitation cases steadily rose to hundreds per year, she says, "so many family members told me, 'I can't prove it, but this killed
him.'""How could you do that to older people who could not protect themselves"Bente Kongsore, a retired accountant in Creswell, Oregon, says
her parents' mental and physical decline accelerated after an assistant manager at a local bank, Susan Paiz, befriended the octogenarians
and subsequently stole $100,000 from them in 2014
To hide the theft, Paiz pretended Kongsore's father, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at age 85, gave her the money
The lie soured the last two years the couple had together, as Kongsore's father questioned himself and his wife questioned him
"It was a total violation of the type of feelings we would want to share with each other at the end of their lives," Kongsore says.By 2016,
her mother had become bedridden, eventually dying in June of that year
Kongsore's father died in December 2017, just weeks before Paiz was sentenced to 10 months in jail
Paiz was caught and convicted thanks to a dogged detective in Bellevue and the King County prosecutor's office in Seattle, which had
established an elder abuse unit in 2001
When Kongsore saw Paiz in the courtroom, she says she thought to herself, "How could you do that to older people who could not protect
themselves"Adding insult to injury, the bank where Paiz worked, Union Bank in Bellevue, didn't return the money until Kongsore scanned and
emailed a bank investigator an incriminating letter Paiz wrote her parents, Kongsore says
She adds that the bank still hasn't formally apologized
Union Bank didn't immediately respond to requests for comment
Paiz couldn't be immediately reached.Financial exploitation is "a huge problem in the sense that it's so profoundly destructive," says Page
Ulrey, a senior deputy prosecutor who became the Seattle unit's first member
The bulk of her cases are financial, involving victims who rarely get their money back
"They're usually emotionally devastated as a result of having been betrayed," she says.In many cases, it may appear the victim gave consent,
but it's often based on manipulation or deception
Like Kongsore's father, victims often "have some level of cognitive impairment, which makes it really difficult for them to figure out the
truth of what's going on," Ulrey says.As a result, many of her cases hinge on showing incapacity
"Obviously, you have the right to give your money to who you want, even if your family disapproves," Ulrey says
But when you suffer from dementia, you may no longer have the ability to judge whether another person has your best interests at heart, or
to understand the consequences of your decisions.If an evaluation shows a victim lacks capacity to make financial decisions, "we potentially
have a stronger criminal case," she says.But capacity assessment by adult protective services investigators and police is uneven across the
"Law enforcement doesn't have good tools to assess capacity," Ulrey says, adding that most jurisdictions lack people who can conduct
thorough evaluations.In 2015, Weill Cornell's Lachs coined the term "Age-Associated Financial Vulnerability," or AAFV, to sound the alarm
He defined it as a "pattern of imprudent financial decision-making that begins at a late age and puts older adults at risk for material
losses that could decimate their quality of life." Financial judgment can start to falter before normal cognition does, Lachs says,
regardless of whether the person was savvy with money when they were younger
In other words, it can happen even when the person seems normal.Despite the severity of the problem, the federal government's response has
been frustrating, according to practitioners and public officials
Joe Snyder, who served as director of older adult protective services at the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, says he's doubtful
necessary funding will arrive in his lifetime
Before he retired, he oversaw 27 investigators with limited resources handling about 3,500 cases a year
Snyder says it was like using water pistols to fight a forest fire.The Elder Justice Act, the first comprehensive legislation to address
abuse of senior citizens, was enacted in 2010 but remained unfunded until 2015-when it was allocated only $4 million
"Dollars appropriated since then have, in Congressional terms, been dribbling," says Marie-Therese Connolly, a former Justice Department
attorney who championed the law, working with the Senate Special Committee on Aging
Originally, the allocation was to be closer to $1 billion, she says."Financial exploitation causes large economic losses for businesses,
families, elders and government programs, and increases reliance on federal health care programs," warned a 2014 elder justice report
Connolly helped prepare.Three years later, a Congressional Record Service report bemoaned a lack of progress
"As a result of this limited federal funding, the federal government has not substantially developed and expanded its role in addressing the
prevention, detection, and treatment of elder abuse.""It's a fundamentally reactive system," says Connolly
"The big story is the dearth, the complete nonexistence, the shameful scandalous absence of any credible prevention or intervention
research."Some progress, however, is being made
In February, the Justice Department announced "the largest coordinated sweep of elder fraud cases in history," charging more than 250
defendants with schemes that caused 1 million mostly elderly Americans to lose more than $500 million
The alleged perpetrators include people who targeted Marjorie Jones, according to one investigator.The dragnet, which lasted one year, is
part of an ongoing effort "to detect and infiltrate these criminal organizations that are trying to exploit the elderly," says Antoinette
Bacon, a career prosecutor who serves as the DOJ's national elder justice coordinator
Her position was created through the Elder Justice Prevention and Prosecution Act, a law signed by President Donald Trump in October meant
to improve coordination among federal, state and local agencies.States have been stepping up as well
Thirty-nine of them and the District of Columbia addressed financial exploitation of the elderly in last year's legislative sessions,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures
More than half enacted legislation or adopted resolutions
Still, Snyder worries the federal block grant many states rely on to pay for services that protect seniors could be cut dramatically under
"If that goes away, programs will be crushed overnight."The financial industry says it's doing more, too
5, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an industry body, put into effect "the first uniform, national standards to protect senior
investors." It now requires members to try to obtain a trusted contact's information so they can discuss account activity
It also permits firms to place temporary holds on disbursements if exploitation is suspected
Loewy, who left her job as a prosecutor in 2014 to join EverSafe, a startup that makes software to monitor suspicious account activity, is
underwhelmed by the industry projects."They may say they're focused on it, but they aren't really doing much more than training employees,"
"Exploiters know what they're doing
They take amounts under $10,000 that they know won't get picked up by fraud and risk folks at banks
And they steal across institutions over time.""We're going to come to a place where we're seeing a lot of homeless elderly people."The dirty
little secret about elder exploitation is that almost 60 percent of cases involve a perpetrator who is a family member, according to a 2014
study by Lachs and others, an especially fraught situation where victims are often unwilling, or unable, to seek justice
Such manipulation sometimes involves force or the threat of force, says Daniel Reingold, chief executive officer of RiverSpring Health, a
nonprofit that provides care to about 18,000 seniors in the New York City area
In 2005, he helped establish the first elder abuse shelter in the country.While many families don't intervene when they suspect a family
member is abusing an elderly relative, Philip Marshall did, in a famous example of elder exploitation
"I was a family member who acted," says Marshall
They say 'we don't want dirty laundry out there.'"Marshall wanted his grandmother, famed socialite Brooke Astor, to enjoy her final years at
her country home, as she had wished
When his father, Anthony Marshall, wouldn't let her, Philip sought guardianship, setting off a legal battle
As the fight progressed, Philip says he discovered that his grandmother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, was enduring various forms
It was "all in an effort by my father to gain her money," he alleges.The dispute culminated in his father's conviction and prison sentence
in 2009 for siphoning off millions of dollars from Astor
At first, says Philip, "Our goal was just to stop my grandmother's isolation and manipulation
We didn't really care about money." A separate legal proceeding over the neglect allegations was eventually resolved
Last year, Philip quit his job as a professor to become a full-time advocate in the fight against elder abuse
He gives talks to government officials and financial institutions and spends hours speaking with strangers dealing with exploitation
"So many times, it's family," he says
"I don't think people realize that."On a rainy April afternoon at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Justice, the shelter
Reingold helped start in the Bronx, there are countless versions of Astor's story unfolding daily, albeit for smaller sums
More than 70 percent of the center's clients are victims of financial abuse, with most also suffering from emotional and physical abuse as
well."It's often a slow and steady and unrelenting experience," says Joy Solomon, a former New York prosecutor and director of the center
She says her team is seeing an increase in seniors showing up in housing court-because they're being evicted
"A lot have been financially exploited and they don't even know what's happening until they get that notice." Losing housing usually
accelerates mental and physical decline, she says.Unless we figure out how to protect the assets of senior citizens from this epidemic,
Solomon says, "we're going to come to a place where we're seeing a lot of homeless elderly people on the street."
