Buyer beware: Scams targeting seniors abound
When you reach a certain age, the harassment begins.
My first contact was with The American Association of Retired People, a legit organization with penchant for horrifyingly insistent ad campaigns. AARP is a fairly solid lobbying group for oldsters, weighing in on protecting Social Security, Medicare, and the like, and supporting anti-ageist programs of various sorts. But to support their efforts (and pay, handsomely, their administrators) AARP offers all sorts of discounts, insurance plans, assistance programs, and similar come-ons.
Then someone fakes AARP mail – a goldmine for illegitimate businesses and outright swindles that target the elderly. The thing has gotten so awful that AARP has its own fraud reporting operation.
The purpose of this warning is not to go after AARP – they do good works, and I generally support their efforts. There are millions of scammers out there under all sorts of falsified cover. The idea here is to warn that once you are on a list like this, sometimes, real creeps come out.
Antigone Barton, for example, had a fine little piece last week in the Palm Beach Post, centered on the problem of scams and fraud in Medicare. Medicare is a critically important facet of any plans for retirement – or for any real medical coverage as you hit the twilight years, when health issues become more serious, and expensive. But it does not cover everything, and that’s where the trouble begins.
Insurance scams are the worst. They attack the most vulnerable people in the place likely to hurt them the most: their wallets. At best, many of these schemes are simply useless: “add-ons” that cover things already covered by Medicare. Or policies created to cover insanely rare circumstances, so often there is no payout at all. And for the privilege of this “coverage” you pay through the nose. They sell these by calling the services something else, touting the idea of patching over things the government won’t cover. At worst, they are simply frauds. The seller grabs a script, promises the moon, collects Social Security, Medicare, and other critical numbers from the victim, and steals all they can lay their hands on. In between, a myriad of other nasty flim-flams, rip-offs and swindles abound.
Personally, for me, it’s the exasperation factor, too. The phone calls. Some of these crooks got my number, and shared it with all their buddies, and the calling is unrelenting. And the emails. They hit at the worst possible time, clogging up my personal and professional email accounts, with crazy offers of “deals” on “crucial, lifesaving, additional coverage.” The temptation to simply delete all missives is strong, but I can’t – there may be a student in there, buried under the pile, needing aid on a last-minute issue with a paper due before break. The snake-oil salesmen have gone low-tech, too. Snail mail arrives daily with slick ads from dubious “insurance companies” - many of them mocked up to look like official government mail – some days, my mailbox looks like the tip of a dumpsite for a papermill.
Scams aimed at folks in their later years are infamously ugly. They range from phony real estate deals to coupon cheats, to fake family emergencies (one of the weirder cons of the holidays is a fake grandson calling from jail – sometimes overseas - for bail money!). Cons with an eye on your savings, your property and your livelihood are rife. There is, or should be, a special circle of Hades dedicated to the perpetual barbequing of the souls of the people who perpetrate this stuff. But until they shuffle off to their just and well-deserved divine judgement, keep yourself safe, be ever skeptical, and hang up.
If you think someone is trying to rip you off, report the matter to the fraud folks at the Florida Attorney General’s Office at https://www.myfloridalegal.com/how-to-contact-us/file-a-complaint or call 1-866-9-NO-SCAM
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. endowed chair in American history, government and civics and Miller distinguished professor of political science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Buyer beware: Scams targeting seniors abound
