Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner practitioner and senior vice president financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter.
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. I'm Chris Boyd here with Jeff Perry and Russ Ball, both of the AMR team. And we are all of Wealth Enhancement Group and glad to have you with us for another episode of the show. Jeff had recently taken a CE course, prompted us for this episode.
I think this is the kind of thing that all of us have run into these kinds of issues when it comes to fraud and scams and the risks of being caught up in these kinds of efforts to trick people into giving up their money. Well, June 15th is World Financial Fraud Abuse Day, Awareness Day. So, you know, every day should be that, right? But with that in mind and some recent data that came out from the FBI and yes, I took that continuing education course.
So it's been hitting me over the back of the head, I guess, for the last week or so, financial fraud. And I think it's a big topic, right? The FBI, the FTC, Social Security, IRS, they all have dedicated efforts to prevent and mitigate and deal with investigations regarding fraud. But I think for our purposes, and I think the intent of the World Day is to focus on seniors who are growing more and more vulnerable to these types of frauds.
And I just want to start out with, you know, setting the stage. We know this, we talk about it from time to time, but America's getting grayer or whiter, or whatever the case may be. 18% or almost 60 million people in the United States. You mean whiter by terms of their hair, you're saying, right? I guess I should be. Yes, whiter. Our hair is getting whiter or losing or leaving us. Older, whatever it might be. Yeah, we're getting older.
Yes. Almost 1 in 5, 18%, a little short of 1 in 5, Americans are over 60. That's a big number. 60 million people in the United States. Obviously, it's growing and growing because we're living longer and the baby boomer generation. 1.9 million Americans are over 90. And there's 90,000 Americans over 100. Wow. I think that just sets the stage of the targets. You know, the title of our podcast today is Targets of Fraud.
Americans are getting older and the types of fraud, this is according to the FBI. I'll throw a link to this report in the notes, so if people want to go into it, but the types of fraud that are impacting Americans, and this is only the fraud that is reported. Of course, we know that less than 10 % of all fraud committed against elderly is reported, and maybe we can go into why that is in a little bit.
But of the number one type of fraud reported to the FBI last year was tech support scams, 18,000. And then it was fraud related to personal data breaches, you know, when they're just trying to get your information and use it for some other purpose later. Number three was confidence and romance scams. There's a lot there to talk about. Number four was non-payment, alleged, this isn't really non-payment, right? It's a fraud. And non-delivery scams. I've heard about this one a lot lately.
I'll give you an example, if you like. And the top fifth, the fifth top reported elder fraud scams last year, according to the FBI, is investment scams. So it's all over. It's not just one thing that people need to be looking for. It's a variety of scams. And that data, according to the FBI, is up 14% last year over the previous year, with no signs of declining. It totaled $3.4 billion in aggregate. And the average scam was $34,000. That's a lot of money to be out. $34,000.
So wait, you're telling me that Bill Gates isn't calling me about repairing my computer? I don't think so. You're a pretty important guy, Chris, but I don't know if he'd personally call you. I think he might have somebody. Have you ever had one of those Microsoft calls? I have not. Oh, I've gotten those. Yeah. This is Microsoft calling. We noticed there's a problem on your computer. We just need to get it rectified.
Can you, you know, and then they pursue trying to, like they're trying to be so helpful. Right. Well, that's nice of them, right? Well, that wasn't that kind of them. And I'm like, who are you? What? You know. I referenced that I had a little experience with the package delivery scam. Yeah. My son called me and said, I think I got scammed. I said, what'd you do? Yeah. And he said that he was waiting for a package, but it was early. So it didn't make sense.
But the post office sent him a text message saying he owed $2, you know, postage due. Yeah. So he didn't think $2. He didn't think about it. Right. So he clicked the link in his text, his credit card, a debit card, whatever he used. And it was $2. It was $2. And instantly the card was hacked. And, you know, the other information, he had to put all this information in to verify it was him. You know, he fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. He, you know, he knew he made a mistake.
That's why he called. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, it doesn't have to be somebody calling asking for $34,000 or something really suspicious sounding. It can be something. I mean, that's why you get these calls and these texts from national banks, Bank of America, Chase. Right. And you say, I don't have a Chase account. And so, you know it, but. You know, the odds are they're going to hit enough people. That's right. Right. And when they make that personal connection, like, it must be true.
I have a Chase account. Right. Right. And so forth. So. Well, you know, as you kind of alluded to this earlier, that the number of victims that are actually affected, it's far fewer that go reported. It's a little bit embarrassing for people. You know, they feel like, oh, how stupid I should have known. But this is only going to get harder to detect with artificial intelligence. You can fake your voices. Right. You could have false identities.
Like, this is going to become more and more prevalent. But what was it? Something like 5 million scams. Exactly. 5 million a year. And to your point, the research has indicated that only 4% of these cases are reported. Yeah. And you can see, I mean, on some level, you go, what are you going to do about it realistically? Right. So do you want to go through the trouble of filing a police report or whatever? They're not really going to catch the people most of the time, you know. Most of the time.
But there are special areas of law enforcement that do gather this data and then ultimately can sometimes be able to shut these things down. Right. And if you have a specific scam, like it's a social security scam, a post office scam, etc., a tax scam, you contact the IRS, has their own division, social security and so forth, the post office. But if it's a general scam, those reports, you can file an online report at the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, and they gather up all the data.
And obviously, they're not going to pick, you know, if you've lost $500, the likelihood of them picking your case and traveling to Africa or wherever, you know, to get your money back. But they look for patterns. They look for commonalities. They look for, you know, modus operandi, you know, ways that they can mitigate and investigate these cases larger and hopefully either with technology or, you know, cyber activity. So you should report it.
You're not going to make the front page of the newspaper that, you know, you're a victim here. Yeah. And be embarrassed or something. Yeah. Right. Let's talk about what are some common scams because I think being aware of some of these can help you to be less susceptible to them. And of course, you know, they alter and they adapt. Yeah, they morph. They sure do.
It's not, you know, necessarily identical to what we might reference here, but, you know, you can maybe have a heightened awareness for some of these things. Yeah, for sure. Also, you know, the topic of why it is that seniors are, I think, more frequently targeted. Let's talk about that for just a quick second and then go into some of these scams. One of them is I think it tends to be not always, but tends to be seniors are a little less technologically comfortable, right?
Things change a lot and they're not necessarily up to the date on all the latest and greatest, you know, things. And so they either take advantage of that, like a self-awareness. Oh, I don't know that I have this mastered or they're able to, you know, use technology in a way that it undermines, you know, it can put you at a disadvantage, you know what I mean? That's right.
I think also when you think about seniors, some seniors, not all, of course, but may have a diminished capacity at times and that they're the most susceptible to these challenges, you know, and they still might, you know, control their finances and things, but they could get more confused or people, they could be in a position where they might trust that someone's to help them when in fact they're, you know, who's positioned themselves to help.
Oh, my call from Microsoft is a nice of you to call, you know, I've been having trouble with my computer, you know, that kind of thing. So in any case, what are some of the scams? Did you want to say something, Russ? You look like you're poised to jump in.
No, I think it's just, yeah, especially when people are calling in and, you know, when you're actually talking to someone on the phone, it's very easy to think like, yeah, this person's calling from a reputable company and I do have that issue, like you mentioned before, and very easy to kind of go down that route and, you know, click on something you shouldn't. And, you know, it's a numbers game, right? So most seniors will not fall for this. We're talking as a percentage, right?
And it's a numbers game. So if you have a senior who is maybe a little cognitively declined, maybe they're isolated, so they don't have someone just to check with. Or maybe they're just more trusting. Those are all reasons. And, you know, I'm not, the number one list, according to my continuing education class, which is from FINRA, is IRS impersonation scams. And I think that goes with, because people generally of all ages are afraid of the IRS. Absolutely. Who wants to mess with the IRS?
Yeah, I don't want to have audits for the rest of my life, right? Yeah. So let's start with one premise as, you know, a positive prevention suggestion is the IRS does not call you, period. It's absolute hard and fast. That's right. The IRS does not make outbound calls. That's correct. They send you correspondence by mail if you have an issue they need to address.
And a common one that was on the Cape for a while, I haven't heard about it, but it was the individual would get a call and say there was about to be a warrant for your arrest. Yeah, I remember this being prominent. Yeah. Because you have failed to pay whatever the IRS scam is. Or it could be, it also was associated with jury duty. You missed jury duty. You didn't show up for the hearing. And now there's a warrant. And the only way to avoid that is to post a bond.
And you can do that by going to your Walgreens or CVS and buying a green card and calling me back. My name is Deputy Dog. And I will take those numbers and you will be off the hook. I will personally take care of it. I think this is an injustice. Yeah. Not fair, but I'm going to help you. Just call me back at this number. Yeah. And then of course, they answer it with IRS warrant service, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So IRS impersonation is number one.
And number two is maybe the oldest one, or at least one of the older ones, lottery and sweepscapes. Yeah. Scams. Yeah. The Nigerian Prince or one of those where they just, if you just help them, give them a little bit to get the legal fees or something. Yeah. Processing fees. I'll share the abundance of wealth that's coming my way. It's difficult to understand how people could buy that one. But, you know, once again, a numbers game, you only need one a day to get rich.
Yeah. They're on the phone all day. Imagine if they put this effort to doing good, right? Well, I could say that about a lot of things. Yes. Robocalls. What are robocalls? What's that about? Robocalls is an automated phone call that you get. Yeah. And it's pretending to be from someone, you know, like a Chase Bank. I hate to keep using Chase. Bank of America. One of the big names. From Big Bank. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. And they're designed to get you to call back.
And so call back the number that they leave you. So this machine is making calls with a fake number. Um, I learned this in politics. I did not know this from law enforcement. But you can using a voice over internet protocol, uh, machine computer software. You can program it to have it come from any number that you set. Interesting. Yeah. So they set it from an area code that might look like Washington, D.C. or New York or.
Yeah. Something close to maybe what your, the real Chase Bank account number is. And so, and they leave a number that you call. So it doesn't feel like you're being, you know, pressured. And then you're into their system, verifying your identity, giving them your social security number. And before you know it, they have everything they need. Yeah. Uh, hard to believe, uh, that, uh, you know, when, when you get that kind of thing, don't call the number given.
If you get a message from your bank, right. Use the number on the back of your ATM card or whatever it is, you know, look it up yourself. Um, and then I received this call. Is this legit? You know, that kind of thing. You can find a way to do that. That's, that's good advice.
A lot of these scams, you know, whether it be someone at your front door, knocking someone calling, whatever it is, if you just stop, if you just pause and say, you know, ask a friend, call a relative, uh, you can call the local law enforcement if you'd like, um, look up the number independently, as you say, and, or just wait, um, just don't react immediately. You know, of course their, their pitch or their messages, something's wrong. You have to get us right now or the world's going to end.
And so just pause. These, um, these grandparents scams are going to become even harder to, uh, discern. Yeah. The voice, uh, uh, AI or whatever it is. And if you think about, uh, social media generally, our grandchildren, our children, we, Hey, we're providing content right now. Um, there's so many examples that AI can pick up from public information.
We had this scam at the sheriff's office several times where it would be like, they would look up someone's social media and many of these are local by the way. So it's something definitely to report to the local law enforcement. So they'll see that you have a grand grandchild or a child, whatever, they may be able to tell what they're involved in. So they have some data, they know their name. So they call and say, Russ, your, your grandchild, um, has been arrested. It's nothing serious.
Don't worry. They asked us to call you because they didn't want to worry anybody else. And they know that you would help quietly privately. So this didn't, you know, get out in the media or anything. Um, it's not serious. Don't worry about it. But little Johnny just needs $500 to get out. And as soon as he's out, I'll call you and you can come pick them up. And, you know, they'll even in our case, when I was working with the sheriff's office, they even gave her address. Right.
Cause obviously they're not, yeah, they're not, um, they don't have their own jail and that's not a real, real scheme here. So they would give the address. People would look it up. We even had people come in and say, I didn't give him any money, but I want to know what's going on. Yeah. Right. And then we had people come in and say, I paid the bail. You know, here's my number. And it's like, that's a scam. And it's so powerful.
I mean, they, they, they have the name, they have some details about you and you're just trying to help and it's not like $10 million. It was usually 500. So you're just reacting real quick. Um, it occurs to me as we're in the midst of this, uh, there was a recent episode of, um, another podcast, the Washington wise podcast, we've had Michael Townsend as a guest before. And, uh, he, they also happened to address fraud, financial fraud, one of their recent episodes, episode one 20.
You may want to check that out. It gave some specifics about the kind of things that a Schwab is doing to protect their clientele. I'm sure that can give people on who use brokerage accounts. I'm sure the similar kinds of practices at the major brokerage platforms, some things to check out. We give it a wrap it up. Um, a short episode today. Anything else you wanted to, uh, you know, the kind of conclude with or resources or, um, you know, things people should keep in mind.
Um, one comment and I'll just refer people to the show notes. I'll put a couple of resources in there. Um, this isn't just from people from foreign countries or criminals. Sometimes it's related to caregivers. Sometimes it's related to people who are in the home, you know, lawfully. And so it's, it's broader than that. So be aware, you know, ask, do your reading, do your research.
If things don't seem right, they probably aren't and turn to somebody and you can always turn to local law enforcement. Don't think that you're the first person to ever call with this. It's very common. And that call can save a lot of grief and a lot of expense, a lot of expense. So it's a way it's awareness day on the 15th. So be aware, maybe talk to your parents or grandparents who are getting older, maybe be more engaged in certain things and, you know, just be aware. Good, good comments.
Good, good suggestions. And thanks for bringing this to our attention. If anyone needs help, whether it's with some of these issues or any aspect of your portfolio management or financial planning, don't hesitate to reach out to us until next time, everybody keeps driving for something more. Thank you for listening to something more with Chris Boyd.
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Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services and Jay Christopher Boyd provide investment advice on an individual basis to clients only. Proper advice depends on a complete analysis of all facts and circumstances. The information given on this program is general financial comments and cannot be relied upon as pertaining to your specific situation. Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the information from this show will generate profits or ensure freedom from loss.
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