Elder Abuse

One challenge facing most consumers is finding trustworthy professionals to help manage their retirement finances. In the last few years, dozens of professional designations have been created, some of which purport to offer special expertise designed specifically for seniors. As described in a recent article, often these new designations are nothing more than a marketing device intended to give seniors a false sense of security. One such example was the designation “Certified Elder Planning … [Read more...] about New Legislation Seeks to Protect Elders from Pseudo Professional Designations

Were you recently notified that you were the winner of the Canadian lottery? Or perhaps you received a secret communiqué from a former official of the Nigerian government asking for your assistance discretely moving money out of his country. Were you surprised by your luck? As discussed in a recent Los Angeles Times article, perhaps you have become a victim of bad luck. These scams are some of the latest variants of a confidence game commonly known as the Spanish Prisoner scam, in which the … [Read more...] about Creative Scams Against Seniors Continue to Flourish

With the ever worsening foreclosure crisis in California, confidence artists have invoked an age-old government program—the land grant—to swindle victims out of their homes. In this article, the Los Angeles Times reported that California and federal authorities recently shut down a San Diego-based company that was allegedly convincing homeowners to pay thousands of dollars to obtain foreclosure protection via the use of a land grant. Allegedly, the victims were told that by transferring their … [Read more...] about The Latest Fairy Tale: the Return of the Land Grant

While elder abuse can take many forms, one method of elder abuse is identity theft. A common form of identity theft is where someone obtains your private confidential information and then uses it to obtain credit accounts. This pernicious problem was humorously illustrated in a series of television commercials from Citibank, including this one. Unfortunately, the problem of identity theft has become so prevalent that according to this article, a National Public Radio station in Madison, … [Read more...] about The LifeLock Controversy: Is There No Protection Against Identity Theft?

Although elder abuse was first recognized in the 1970s as a problem in the United States, it is disappointing to see that it is still not a well-know public health issue, especially considering the magnitude of the problem. According to this report prepared for Congress, during 1996 there were 500,000 incidents of elder abuse in the United States. However, this same report asserts that elder abuse claims were vastly underreported, with only 16% of the incidents being reported to law enforcement … [Read more...] about June 15th is Elder Abuse Awareness Day!