Just days after moving here from Southern California, my father’s identity was stolen. Actually, he gave it away willingly, tricked by one of those scam artists who phones elderly people pretending to be a helpful representative from their bank. “All we need is for you to verify your social security number so we can reverse this unauthorized charge to your account.” As the big red Staples button says, “That was easy;” even people without dementia might have been suckered.
I tried to be optimistic about it, saying that if we posted a fraud alert to the credit reporting agencies and notified Social Security, then not much would happen. The woman at the social security office sighed sympathetically as I was explaining the situation. “Oh, they’re so trusting. This happens all the time,” she said.
For a few months, we heard nothing more. But last week a Medicare billing notice came in for services rendered somewhere in Massachusetts. My dad’s shaky, all-caps message on the bill held a pathetic appeal: “FRAUDULENT CHARGE” and “NO SERVICE PROVIDED.” He looked deflated as I told him that there may be more such notices, along with fraudulent credit card bills and so on. I decided not to mention that collection agencies could start calling.
ID theft is a huge problem and promises to get bigger. The combination of a rotten economy and a growing multitude of confused old people with good credit means that increasing numbers of these young operators will be gathering like piranhas. Identity thieves are hard to catch, and even when they are caught they face far lighter sentences than someone committing robbery, for example—although the sums they get away with are usually much larger.
My parents, like most elders, are a disaster waiting to happen. Their penchant for writing checks in public all but screams, “Take my money! Please!” It’s as easy as snapping a quick photo from behind using a cell phone camera; all the thief needs is the routing number at the bottom of the check in order to create new checks with a different name. A person’s entire account can be emptied in no time.
Until recently, my stepmother was leaving checks in their mailbox to be picked up (one of them was made out to the IRS in pencil because she couldn’t find a pen that day.) We’ve insisted she stop doing that, and now letters are taken to an actual post office. But solving one problem sometimes leads to another. After years of resistance, she started using a debit card and is now a convert. That also carries some serious risks, so I imagine it’s only a matter of time before someone swipes her info, makes a new card and begins plundering her account.
It’s a losing battle, and can take many forms. Fraudulent lawsuits are another way people scam the elderly. One 90-year-old woman I knew was sued by her next door neighbors for “water damage” to their basement even though there were no leaking pipes, just some random moisture that may have seeped in from the street above. The woman was so distraught that she had a nervous breakdown and ended up first in the hospital, then a nursing home for the rest of her life.
Maybe the wise old ones had the right idea: buy what you need, and use cash whenever possible. And trust only those people you know.
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