The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office has hit the road to educate seniors about all the scams they need to watch out for.
Looking at everything from romance to home repair scams, these frauds cost consumers $8.8 billion in 2022.
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At a Fraud Fighter event at the Boston Elks Lodge in West Roxbury, Jackie Lamont from the Suffolk County DA’s office talked to a crowd of seniors.
“This is our theme for today. Stop! It's a scam!” she said. “You get a phone call from someone who says they're from the government and that you missed a court date and you have till 7 p.m. to pay this fine, absolutely not! Stop! It's a scam!”
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The seniors showed up to find out how to protect themselves. This Fraud Fighters presentation is a multi-agency anti-scam effort led by Suffolk County DA Kevin Hayden.
“Well, born a little bit out of personal experience,” he says. “So my parents have been affected by exactly the things that we talk about in this presentation. And just because we know how important intervention and prevention is, and we know how important it is for people to know about this stuff before it happens, because once it does happen, it becomes problematic.”
The workshop is aimed at helping older adults and all residents spot scams and avoid schemes soliciting money, by giving them the details of common tactics used by criminals.
“We could be doing this every day, there's people are going to be targeted every single day,” says Lamont. “And unless we talk about it more and more …..you could hear people sharing their own personal experiences, and many of them said I was embarrassed. Some were getting emotional as they were talking about it, and we want to give them a safe space to not only learn, but to share what they're going through.”
There were warnings about shipping or delivery message scams, computer hack scams, phone scams and warnings not to buy gift cards, or get fooled into taking out a cash advances or loans to pay anyone for anything! And to never sign paperwork unless you have closely reviewed what it says.
“I thought it was very informative,” says Nelson Mardirosian, a West Roxbury resident who attended the event. “And it's serious stuff. I mean, in the past, I’ve gotten a couple of calls in the past, but I just hung up on them. And, we've had people coming around to doing some kind of work on the house and so forth…but there's some more serious stuff that people fell for going to the bank and forth to get money, and that's, it's awful.”
“ I thought it was wonderful. I thought that folks came and allowed people to share their experiences. The information was extremely helpful,” says West Roxbury resident Vicki Soler. “The places that you can report stuff to the agencies that are willing to help you to, get out of the mess that you may have gotten yourself into, I think that was the pieces of information that I found most helpful.”
The DA says today’s con artists are very good at what they do, and they target vulnerable people for a reason.
“We want them to be aware and educated so they know that they know that they can stop and that it's a fraud,” Hayden says. “Trust yourself, and know that the scammers are out there. And if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't right.”
You can check out the Suffolk County District Attorney’s website for more information on Fraud Fighters and to find the dates of upcoming workshops. There is also information on where you can turn for help. The DA’s office encourages everyone who has been the victim of a scam to report it. You should not be embarrassed about it. Law enforcement is there to help.
You can get that information here.
