“And I don’t even have an account with U.S. Bank,” Brown said.
At the seminar, LAPD Senior Lead Officer Carlos Diaz and Det. Albert Smith, along with Evelia Gonzalez, a manager in L.A. County’s Aging & Disabilities Department, covered the basics of physical and emotional elder abuse as well as financial scams, all of which can be orchestrated by acquaintances or even family members, in addition to strangers.
As for the latter, “Don’t give anyone any information,” said Gonzalez, and don’t answer phone calls from unfamiliar numbers. She warned the St. Barnabas gathering of lottery scams, in which people are told they need to pay the taxes upfront to claim jackpots or new cars, and of romance scams, in which suitors are after something other than a relationship.
At the seminar, “fraud alert” literature from the L.A. County district attorney’s office warned of door-to-door home-improvement scams, charity scams, gift card scams, auto collision scams and prescription drug scams.
And then there’s the scurrilously under-handed ripoff in which a grandparent gets a call saying a grandchild has been involved in an accident or some other emergency, and money must be wired immediately. To make such pleas more convincing, the swindlers might dig up information about the “grandchild” on social media, or artificially replicate the voice of the grandchild.
As Neal and Mrs. K. have discovered, once you’ve been ripped off, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to get your money back. They each have accounts at Chase and wonder why their bank representatives didn’t suspect something was amiss when they made such large withdrawals — especially all cash, in the case of Mrs. K.
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