According to Federal Bureau FBI statistics, in 2021 there were 92,371 victims of fraud over the age of 60, resulting in losses of $1.7 billion. Similarly, a recent article from the UK's Daily Mail newspaper gives losses within the UK for 2022 as £460 million across 57,430 cases. Similar figures can likely be found for other countries.
From the above it can be seen that scams against seniors are unfortunately very lucrative for the criminals involved. It is for this reason that the Scams Against Fraud website has been created to try and alert potential victims of fraud and to provide resources to anyone who may be trying to assist or educate their elder relatives about the dangers facing them.
Within this section of the forum we will give details of some of the most common scams that are targeting seniors. Whilst some of the scams detailed here may appear very US centric, it is important to remember that the scams can be used to target victims worldwide - for every scammer claiming to be from the IRS, there will be other committing similar scams whilst claiming to be from the UK's HMRC or the Australian, Canadian, French or German, etc. tax authorities.
In addition to the information presented in this section of the forum, we will soon be opening up additional sections where some of our members will be posting examples of the scams that they have received or had forwarded to them by friends and family
Finally, it is important to note that, while this site is focused on helping seniors avoid scams and fraud, in many cases the scams that we are detailing here could be targeted against anyone. We therefore welcome posts from anyone, regardless of age, if they think they information that might help others avoid becoming victims of fraud or if they themselves think they may be being targeted by scammers.