Finding the Perpetrators and Helping our Elders

In the past few months, I have discussed different frauds and abuses the elderly and minority groups have endured and some of the attributing factors leading to them. Although these crimes have been happening for a long time and continue to happen every day, elders and minorities continue to be abused. It may be a lack of knowledge and awareness, the simple desire to want to believe people are always good, or their inability to understand the situation when they get defrauded. Regardless of the reasoning, this is an abuse often goes unpunished and one that needs to be minimized.  However, to it one must know the perpetrator and the crimes they commit, in order to protect against it. Judith B. Sklar outlines perpetrators in her paper, “Elder and Dependent Fraud: A sampler of Actual Cases to Profile the Offenders and the Crimes They Perpetrate.”

She outlines four different kind of perpetrators, the first being “adult children, grandchildren, or other relatives, second; professional or hired caretakers, third: friends or others in a position of trust, and fourth: professional crime groups that target elders and dependent adults.” In looking over at these groups, it becomes obvious that most of the categories are made up of people who one would think they could trust; however, this is not the case. The sad reality is that children and other relatives make up the largest group of perpetrators and many times take advantage of their elderly relatives to extract money or possessions. These crimes often go unpunished because they go undiscovered or the elder does not want to see their loved on penalized or incarcerated by the law. Caretakers on the other hand are a hired group one would expect to be professional, they tend to be screened by their employers for crimes, yet, histories of theft and drug use often go through the cracks.  Others such as close friends in a position of trust are also in a position to commit fraud because they can influence the elder to make investments and expenditures, and they can often times go undetected. Lastly, professional crime groups are probably the most threatening since these people make a living from swindling elders out of their savings, with scams such as seen in earlier posts. 

From all of the above scams we see that perpetrators tend to misuse legal documents, which is a reason they can be mistaken for civil cases as opposed to criminal cases. This fact coupled with the government’s lack or resources to look into elder fraud criminal leaves the issue underserved. A solution to a lack of resources by the government is to have a specific elderly fraud department who can investigate such occurrences and can criminally prosecute perpetrators for their crimes. Outreach should also be made to bankers, doctors, nurses, and neighbors so they can understand some of the red flag indicating fraud and can report it and stop it before it escalates further. All these measures along with our own vigilance can help make the world we live in friendlier for our elders. 

Sklar, Judith B (2000). “Elder and Dependent Fraud: A sampler of Actual Cases to Profile the Offenders and the Crimes They Perpetrate.” Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect. 12:2,19-32