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Scams on Elderly Rise: Texas ranks #3 in the country

May 18, 2024 3 min read

SAN ANTONIO- The FBI’s recent release of its 2023 Elder Fraud Report has brought to light a pressing issue – scams targeting Texans over 60. The statistics are alarming: 7,035 complaints resulted in losses totaling over $278 million. These crimes, ranging from phishing and personal data breaches to romance and investment scams, often lead to significant financial losses, with cryptocurrency being a common operating method for scammers.

We spoke to Dennis and Joy Shockey. They lost nearly 200-thousand dollars through a pop-up computer scam. That money is still gone, those scammers are still on the loose and looking for their next victims.

“We realized that our trust in not in a human being, it’s in Jesus,” says the victim of a scammer Dennis Shockey.

The Shockeys learned a tough lesson, after losing over $170,000 to scammers, the couple who is in their 80s are more careful and share their story as often as they can.

“They catch it on time and get their money back, but we haven’t been that fortunate,” says Shockey.

According to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, last year, nearly 300 elderly were scammed, through such things as ID theft, wire fraud, forgery, or counterfeiting. So far this year, 91 elderly reported being scammed.

“They entice people to invest or they work on their loneliness, I’m your best friend,” says certified financial crimes investigator Ralph Dahm.

Dahm works with law enforcement across the country and has successfully recovered $450 million dollars for victims with his expertise in crypto recovery. He says elderly Texans are big targets possibly due to our close proximity to Mexico.

“You find a lot of these scammers when they get the money they try to move into a fake Mexican bank account, fake company name, many times just operating over the border found one last week operating in New Mexicali,” says Dahm.

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If you’re elderly and have been a victim of scammers, click here for agencies that can help you

Dahm says its possible for funds to be recovered but time is of the essence.

“The faster we can react the more likely we can identify where the stolen currency is now and work with law enforcement to seize them,” says Dahm.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for the Shockeys. Thanks to a GoFundMe, they’ve managed to recover about a third of their money lost, but not much else.

“We’re in our 80s that money that we lost, we cannot recover that money. We have no way through retirement or anything to refund us, we’re just out that money,” says Shockey.