LAKE COUNTY — Kelseyville resident Sharesa Price is at her wits end about what to do with the scores of callers she says are targeting her mother, trying to pry the savings from the 68-year-old, who wants to be known only by her first name, “Nancy.”
Both have been residents in the county for 25 years, and for nearly that long Nancy has been the target of alleged scams.
“I”m just about as frustrated as I can be ? She”s into every lottery and every sweepstakes, it”s an addiction that scammers play into. The phone call today really has me upset, because it seems like she”s very close to buying into it,” said Price.
“Nancy” said she took a call Tuesday from someone claiming to be from the Canadian Border Patrol saying that she had won $100,000 in the lottery, and that the next thing she needed to do was buy a money gram. She asked questions, got a name and phone number, but ultimately hung up.
According to Lake County Sheriff Rodney Mitchell, she did the right thing to protect herself by just hanging up the phone.
“The best advice I have is to just hang up. If you think it”s suspicious, don”t engage them, the easy task is to say ?I do not do solicitations” and hang up. Tell me of a legitimate person who has won $100,000 from a phone call, it”s not going to happen,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell said not all of the suspicious phone calls people receive are legally scams. “Sometimes those calls are schemes, but still legal schemes. These shady business practices can be the case with those calls, if it is somehow a scam that we might have jurisdiction over and a person wants to report it they can call the Sheriff”s department.”
“Nancy,” after hanging up, was tempted to find out more information, so she called the phone number given to her. She did not reach anyone but was immediately called back.
The phone number, 1-800-287-8667, was dialed by “Nancy”s” mother and the Record-Bee on Tuesday, both calls met with a dial tone. “They talked to me and tried to make it sound safe. I think they do that so the seniors and myself would think it was safe,” said “Nancy.”
Seniors are susceptible to scam artists for a variety of reasons, experts say, including their age and possible memory or other deficiencies, the fact that they live alone, their trusting nature, and their retirement savings scammers are trying to strip away.
Mitchell said, “They were raised in a generation when a hand shake meant something. Scammers pray upon that innate trust seniors have. That trust comes from the way they recall business used to be done. My advice is they should avoid committing to anything, never divulge checking account or credit card information, and do research when people are trying to garner donations.”
While the National Center of Elder Abuse estimates that more than 5 million senior citizens are victimized by scam artists each year, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service says consumers send $120 million a year to bogus lottery scams, many more scams go unreported each year.
Sam Laird of the Lake County Victim-Witness program said, “If they have a kid who”s itching to put them into a nursing home then that”s just one more thing they could use as a reason, so they don”t want to report it. They also feel embarrassed that they were duped.”
With the U.S. Census Bureau reporting a rapidly growing 16.2 percent population of senior citizens in Lake County?six percent higher than the statewide average?the issue of seniors becoming the victims of scams heightens for the area. Laird noted two scam incidents during his seven years on the job in Lake County, and that nationwide scamming that targets seniors has been “rampant for 20-25 years.” In July, after a spate of alleged scams in the county, the Record-Bee reported on a CHP imposter claiming to be an officer in order to solicit funds.
Price summed up her feelings on the Tuesday incident with her mother, “there are a lot of seniors around here that get caught up in this, and a lot of folks are sending money that they don”t have. The thing that really frustrates me is the fear and loneliness that a lot of these seniors are living with, worrying that any phone call they get could be a scam. It”s really terrible.”
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com. To comment on this story or any others, look at the end of this story for “Comments,” fill in the web form, and the click “Publish”
