Elderly in the suburbs cheated more often, and adult children can be put in a bind

During her weekly visit to her parents' house, M. Fleischmann's 82-year-old mother asked her to sit down. Then, in a hushed voice, she dropped a bombshell.

“I have to tell you something,” she told her 54-year-old daughter. “We've lost all our savings.”

She explained someone who identified himself as FBI Agent Clark Mahoney had called their Northwest suburban home and said they'd won a sweepstakes contest they'd entered, but their $125,000 prize check had been stolen.

The “FBI agent” said the authorities had recovered the money and now needed her account information to transfer it to her. She gave it to him.

Mahoney called a few times a week with “updates” and instructions on who to send checks to so she could recoup her prize money. A few months after the initial March 2010 call, Fleischmann's mother realized it was a scam. By then, more than $200,000 was gone.

“They had a trust and $100,000 in assets. Now they have nothing. They might lose their house,” said Fleischmann, who asked to protect her parents' identity by withholding their names and her first name.

Scenarios like this are increasingly common across the suburbs and the state, and they come in many forms — bogus sweepstakes contests or prize announcements, unsolicited house repairs, Nigerian lottery e-mails, or the now-popular “get your grandchild out of a foreign jail” scam.

Complaints about this type of consumer fraud have risen 33 percent in the past seven years, to roughly 33,000 in 2010, said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and many of the victims are seniors.

While being scammed is often financially devastating to elderly victims, it can be an emotional roller coaster for their entire family. That's because the adult children often step in to straighten out the mess, and in some cases, take control of their parents' finances. It can be an extremely stressful, time-consuming process.

“When the child suddenly becomes the parent, it's an awkward, difficult transition,” said Madigan, who has made it a top priority to crack down on scams.

To help her parents sort out the financial aftermath, Fleischmann took time off from her full-time job to meet with lawyers, bankers, doctors and police investigators. She spent hours on the phone updating her out-of-town siblings and sending certified letters to banks with copies of police reports explaining what happened so they'd stop harassing and threatening her parents, whom she describes as “frail and adorable.”

Fleischmann spends even more time with her parents now, discussing their new scaled-back, fixed-income budget. To deal with the emotional fallout, she's nudged them to talk to doctors and their priest about the shame and sadness they feel.

“There's been a little pushback. (My mom) doesn't like being so open,” Fleischmann said. “I've taught her to repeat this mantra: ‘I didn't do anything wrong. I was victimized by a criminal.'”

The stress of it all has led Fleischmann to have “a few good cries” and sometimes awaken in the middle of the night, her heart pounding with anxiety.

“I just run through all the places of what this is going to become,” she said.

Rose Young has experienced similar anxiety while monitoring the spending of her 92-year-old dad, who lives in Elgin and likes to enter sweepstakes in hopes of winning cash or prizes. In the past few years, Young estimates he's squandered $35,000 on shady people or organizations who have scammed him by phone or through the mail.

Even though the prizes never show up, it doesn't deter him.

“If he wants to enter a few contests, OK. It's his money. If he wants to enter a sweepstakes that benefits autism, OK. But not this much (money),” said Young, who lives in Freeport. “To this day, my dad is still thinking he's going to prove everyone wrong and get his money.”

Young said she became suspicious of her dad, a retired bookkeeper, when he skipped his weekly bowling league because he told her he had to “see some people” and “take care of some things.”

She later learned he had wired a total of $8,000 to different people in Jamaica to claim his alleged “sweepstakes prize” of $150,000 cash and a $1 million check. He told Young he needed to send the money “to get the money out of the country.”

Since then, Young has spent entire days dealing with everyone from her father's caretaker to the money-wiring clerks at Walmart and Meijer.

She always must be on alert. One time, Young said her dad sneaked out of the house and called a cab so he could wire $800 to Jamaica because he believed he had won a new Mercedes-Benz, even though he no longer drives.

Young's changed her father's phone number five times, but scammers still call. She got him a post office box and frequently filters his mail, but sweepstakes entries still end up in his hands.

“My whole life has revolved around this,” said Young, 60, a newly retired teacher.

“You trusted people”

There are a wide range of reasons why scammers prey on seniors. They're often home and easier to reach, more trusting than the younger generation, and could be lonely or in the early stages of dementia. Kane County Sheriff Lt. Kevin Williams stressed that plenty of victims are smart, healthy seniors who just get duped by good con artists.

“They grew up in an era where you trusted people,” said Williams, who does TRIAD senior scam education programs across the suburbs.

“Back then, you could leave your car door open. You could leave your garage door open. You could shake on something, and that was like giving your word. The world's not like that anymore,” added Cherie Aschenbrenner, the Elgin Police Department's crime prevention specialist and elderly service officer who leads TRIAD programs with Williams.

Even after they're scammed, Aschenbrenner said, seniors often don't call the police because they're embarrassed or want to avoid the hassles that will follow.

“They don't want to bother the police. They don't want to go to court. They'll say, ‘I don't know where the courthouse is. I don't know where to go.' There's a fear of retaliation,” she said. “Or, they're afraid their kids will think they need to be in a nursing home.”

In some cases, being scammed can be a warning sign of a senior's deteriorating health. Convincing an elderly parent to see a doctor about this issue is often a difficult conversation that's met with resistance, children of scam victims say.

To get her dad to see a neurologist — who could test his brain function and decision-making abilities — Young had to secretly explain the situation to her father's doctor. The doctor then recommended to her dad that he see a neurologist without admitting he knew about the scams.

After the neurologist determined Young's dad was no longer capable of managing his own money, Young went to court and became her father's guardian and money manager. The process took several months and put a strain on their close relationship.

“He's lonely. He's sitting here and getting these stupid phone calls from people who he thinks are his buddies, and they're going to give him all these things. Me? He thinks I'm trying to take his money away. I think he knows now that I'm not the evil one ... but it took a long time,” she said.

Once, Young remembers feeling guilty about controlling her dad's spending and gave him $15,000 from a certificate of deposit that had matured. He sent most of it to people in Jamaica, she said.

“I still don't know what's causing my father to do this, but it doesn't matter at this point,” she said. “I once said, ‘If you win $100,000, what are you going to do with it?' He just kind of looked at me, like, ‘I don't know what I'm going to do.' He can live comfortably on what he has if he's careful ... maybe it's just the thought of having this extra money.”

A long way to go

In the past year, Madigan's office stepped up its scam education efforts and took a few big steps forward to crack down on scammers, but there's still a long way to go.

In a major settlement last fall, Publishers Clearing House — who Madigan said is a major source of complaints to the Illinois Attorney General's office — cut a deal with 31 states, including Illinois, to limit what people over the age of 65 can spend on their contests. The company also agreed to stop misleading people into believing that spending more money on their contests increased their odds of winning prizes.

Publishers Clearing House Assistant Vice President Christopher Irving said the company set up a phone hotline and database to educate customers and is working with police to fight scams which fraudulently use their name.

“Our recent agreement with the state of Illinois strengthened our own consumer protection program to contact our active customers to insure they are responding to mailings appropriately,” Irving said.

Illinois legislators approved a measure that went into effect last year that requires more training for bank employees on this topic, but banks have resisted, wanting to protect their customers' privacy, Madigan said. “It was really hard fought,” Madigan said. “For many people, banks have become very impersonal.”

Fleischmann is asking legislators to find a way to put the onus on banks to take more responsibility. “If a little old lady walks in and takes $20,000 out of her bank account a few times a month, someone needs to pull her aside,” she said.