31 July 2023
Elizabeth Gaona was not fooled.
The 94-year-old retired critical care nurse didn’t believe for a minute that the check for more than $10,000 written to her from “Swiss Lotto” was real. Nor did she believe that, per the letter that accompanied the check, she would be receiving $1.6 million more.
“It’s disgusting,” she said. “I recognized it as a scam right away.”
But others are not so lucky.
Elder fraud in the U.S. increased 84% from 2021 to 2022, according to the FBI.
The same report found that monetary losses from those schemes went up more than 300% year over year, topping more than $3.1 billion.
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