Excellent article - I have just joined for free - hopefully that is not a scam lol
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You forgot fraudulent children. Those who guilt the parent into "loaning" money, or who take over their finances only to write out checks to themselves because they "deserve" it .
Case in point my sister who "borrowed" thousands from mother, and took fathers checkbook . Families seem to easily turn a blind eye when it is one of their own vs a stranger stealing.
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Like most articles of this nature, the responsibility of protecting the elderly falls on the shoulders of the adult children. But in my experience, the fraud and exploitation is the work of the adult children. I'm currently trying to clean up a nightmare of a mess my aunt's daughter created by opening eleven fraudulent credit cards and using her mom's bank account to make minimum payments each month to a total sum of $35,000. At the same time she was "taking care" of her mom at a cost of nearly 1500 a month. How do we protect the elderly from their own children?
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Our brother in law only had about 40,000 left in his account after his wife passed. ALL OF IT was sent to someone who asked for money every month. We tried to explain to him that this was not right, but we are relatives and by the time we found out what was going on, he had sent it all. What a shame. He ended up on state funded care with Alheimers
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While my partner was on hospice, someone broke into our storage unit. My old business checks (which I thought were all shredded, she took and forged my name and cashed them at a local bank. She had the nerve to put her own account number on the back of the checks. They caught her while she was trying to cash another check. She faked an attack and they were forced to take her to the ER. Then they handed her a summons to court, which they know she will not attend and is probably on the run at present. I had my wonderful bank take over and I got all the money back. The bank she cashed the checks at are covering all my charges. But, this is one scam you cannot protect on line. GUARD your blank checks. These druggies will do whatever they have to do to get their drugs. Her checks amounted to a total of 1600 and who knows how much the check she was going to cash was. This is a FEDERAL case and will require a Grand Jury. Thank God I had enough in the bank to cover my bills. BEWARE of anyone even those you think you trust. The person who got the checks worked for the company that my insurance company hired to rebuild our home when we had a fire. I specifically asked them if all of their employees were background checked and was told YES What more could I have done?
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Mr. Furman, thanks for the tips, very timely article.

One thing I did for myself was to freeze my credit by going into each of the 3 major credit bureaus on-line... it was easy to find "credit freeze" on their website, answered their questions to make sure it was me, and the cost at the time was $10 for each site.

Now no one can use my name and credit to obtain a new car, new credit cards, or a mortgage.

Now if only I could convince my parents to do the same.
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When my mom was living alone she fell for puzzle contest scam. It was costing her a fortune. When she wanted to cash in her investments, her financial advisor called the police and alerted the bank. When my continued social services was called and they called me. I asked my mom why she didn't believe the police, etc., she told me, "They are just jealous of the millions of dollars I'm going to win." Telling a senior with even mild dementia about scams doesn't work for many. Their rational thought is impaired. Reporting it is far more important. If it comes in the mail send it to the postmaster with mentioning elder abuse fraud.
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Can you list some legitimate identity theft websites? It seems risky to just pick one, not knowing if it is a scam site set up to collect the information you're trying to protect.
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