Safeguarding Seniors: Comprehensive Strategies to Prevent Elder Fraud and Financial Abuse

The risk of elder fraud and financial abuse has skyrocketed, with losses exceeding $28 billion annually in the U.S. This form of exploitation, often perpetrated by strangers through scams or by trusted individuals like family members or caregivers, can devastate financial security and independence. For those planning to remain at home, proactive measures are essential to protect assets, maintain autonomy, and avoid the emotional toll of victimization. 

In the comprehensive guide that follows, we'll explore dozens of tips, tricks, and strategies drawn from expert sources, legal insights, and real-world practices. We'll also reference key articles from our blog, such as "Identity Theft: Credit Monitoring and Freezes (With Links to Credit Agencies)," which provides practical steps for locking down credit reports, and "A Cautionary Tale for Aging-in-Place Planning in Ohio: Embezzlement, Undue Influence, and the Importance of Safeguards in Estate Management," highlighting real-life risks and safeguards in estate planning. Additionally, for immediate action, check our "Handy Link - Reporting Ohio Adult Abuse or Exploitation" for state-specific reporting resources.

By implementing these ideas, seniors and their families can build a multi-layered defense against exploitation. We've organized them into categories for clarity, but remember: the more strategies you layer, the stronger your protection.Understanding the Threat: Why Prevention MattersElder financial abuse includes scams like lottery fraud, identity theft, and investment cons, as well as internal threats like undue influence from relatives. Isolation, cognitive decline, and inappropriate trust in others, and even paranoia (interrupting natural and appropriate trust in loved ones or professional advisors) make seniors prime targets. Prevention starts with awareness: normalize discussions about finances to reduce stigma and empower action. Financial Safeguards: Protecting Assets and Accounts

• Plan Ahead:  Protect your assets, decision-making, and ensure your wishes are followed through careful legal and financial planning.  If you don't have, or can't afford, Legal Tools, like those discussed in the next section, consider a financial caregiver. Financial caregiving involves managing another person’s finances due to changing life circumstances such as aging, disability, or illness. The ABA Foundation offers a variety of resources to guide you on the caregiving journey, whether you’re a senior needing a caregiver or a potential caregiver looking for ways to help. It also publishes a free guide, "Financial Caregiving and You."

• Screen Family Caregivers: Screening family caregivers is a critical component of a robust elder fraud prevention strategy, especially when paired with legal tools like trusts, advance directives, GDPOAs, and HCPOAs. By vetting caregivers thoroughly and embedding safeguards into legal documents, seniors can protect their finances and health while aging in place.  See our separate article, "Family Caregiver Screening: A Critical Step to Prevent Elder Fraud and Financial Abuse in Aging in Place," which follows this article.  

• Freeze Your Credit Reports: Contact major credit bureaus to place a freeze, preventing scammers from opening new accounts in your name. This is a free, reversible action; details in our article "Identity Theft: Credit Monitoring and Freezes (With Links to Credit Agencies)."

• Monitor Credit Regularly: Review free annual credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com (the only source for free credit reports authorized by federal law).  Be cautious of websites that claim to offer free credit reports. Some of these websites will only give you a free report if you buy other products or services. Other websites give you a free report and then bill you for services you have to cancel.  Additionally, you may be able to view free credit reports more frequently online. When you visit AnnualCreditReport.com, you may see steps to view your updated credit reports at no cost, online, giving you a greater ability to monitor changes in your credit. If needed, you can also ask whether your credit report is available in your preferred language.

• Third Party Monitoring and Alert Tools: EverSafe is an app that scans bank accounts, credit reports, and bills for anomalies (e.g., unusual withdrawals), alerting family members. LifeLock (Norton), offers identity theft protection with real-time alerts and $1 million insurance for losses. Senior plans in 2025 include caregiver access for as little as $9.99/month.  Additionally, many banks have trusted contact programs whereby you can designate a family member to receive alerts on suspicious activity without granting transaction powers.

• Keep Information Private, Particularly Over the Phone: Never give personal information, including Social Security Number, account number, or other financial information to anyone over the phone unless you initiated the call and trust the other party.  Never share your bank passcodes, including one-time verification codes, or provide anyone with access to your bank account, online credentials, debit card number or PIN.

• Use Bill-Pay Services: Automate payments through trusted platforms to reduce manual handling.

• Take Time: Never rush into a financial decision. Ask for details in writing and get a second opinion.

• Designate a Trusted Contact at Financial Institutions: Name someone your bank can contact if suspicious activity is detected, without giving them transaction authority.

• Develop Financial Relationships: Get to know your banker, broker, and insurance agent and build a relationship with the people who handle your finances. They can look out for any suspicious activity related to your accounts.

• Check References: Check references and credentials before hiring anyone new, and don’t allow workers to have access to information about your finances.

• Set Up Account Alerts: Enable notifications for transactions over a certain amount or unusual activity via your bank's app, and consider having these notifications shared automatically with trusted advisors.

• Use Limited-Access Accounts: Create separate checking accounts for daily expenses with low balances, keeping main savings isolated.

• Lock Up Sensitive Documents: Store checkbooks, statements, and IDs in a secure safe, particularly when others are in your home.

• Shred Documents: Shred receipts, bank statements, and unused credit card offers before throwing them away. 

• Residential Document Shredding Services: Consider a service such as Shred-it, Iron Mountain, or Proshred, that will periodically pick up and shred sensitive documents, many from locked containers, protecting documents from loss or misuse until destruction. 

• Use Secure Mailboxes: Opt for locked mailboxes to prevent mail theft.  Make sure they are approved by the US Postal Service, however. 

• Avoid Public Wi-Fi:  Stick to secure networks, especially for banking and financial transactions, but know that public wi-fi might exploit your device, meaning loss of sensitive information you didn't intend to expose.

• Question Reverse Mortgage Offers: Research thoroughly, as scams target seniors with home equity.  See, "Home Equity Conversion (Reverse) Mortgages Exploited to Defraud Senior Citizens." This FBI-produced website describes several reverse mortgage scams targeted at senior citizens.

• Avoid Pre-Signed Checks: Never sign blank checks or give them to caregivers.

• Review Bank Statements Monthly: Scrutinize for unauthorized charges and question any discrepancies immediately.

• Opt for Direct Deposits: Minimize handling of physical checks to reduce theft risks.

• Use Prepaid Cards for Online Purchases: Limit exposure by loading only what you need for specific transactions.

• Consider Cards for Documentation: Pay with credit cards instead of cash to keep a paper trail.  For less obvious reasons, consider the numerous articles on this blog discussing filial responsibility and how Medicaid eligibility is disrupted by cash transactions without supporting documentation.  In addition to complicating future financial transactions, you may be putting your trusted advisors (child as agent under a power of attorney) at risk of suspicion for such cash transactions.

• Bogus Taxes and Fees:  Never pay a fee or taxes to collect sweepstakes, lottery “winnings,” or products you have already paid for.  Report 'surprise" or "undisclosed" fees to counsel or law enforcement; they may be unlawful. 

• Don't Use Your Account for Others: Do not use your own bank account, or open one in your name, to receive or transfer money for an employer, friend, or anyone else.

• Third Party Checks: Don't accept or endorse a check that’s not in your name, even if a friend or employer asks you to do it.

• Love Interests or Remote Friends:Never send money to online love interests or remote friends, even if they appear to send you money first.

• Beware Crypto-Scams: Never purchase cryptocurrency or gift cards on behalf of, or for, someone you met online or over the phone.

• Never Buy Third-Party Checks:  Scammers offer what appear to be income tax refund checks and U.S. Treasury checks (like those issued for Social Security), often with a story that they can't deposit the check since they don't have an account. They offer a discount for "your trouble." 

• Don't be a Money Mule: If someone sends you money and asks you to send it to someone else, you might be a "Money Mule," laundering illegally acquired money.  Criminals recruit neighbors, and through online job ads, social media, enticing investment opportunities, and dating websites.  If you participate, you could lose a lot of money or end up with an overdrawn account.  Worse, you could face legal trouble as an accomplice to a crime. 

• Don't Buy Gift Cards If Requested: If you are asked to buy gift cards and send them for any reason, especially an emergency involving a family member you cannot contact, refuse and report the caller.

• Educate on Deepfake Tech: Be cautious of video calls from "relatives" in distress; verify identity and speak directly with the person. 

• Build a "Fraud Response Plan": Document steps to take if scammed, including contacts and recovery resources.  

• Protect Against Credit Invisibility: An often overlooked problem for seniors seeking to age in place is a senior being "credit invisible." A 2015 report found that  26 million Americans are "credit invisible." This figure indicates that one in every ten adults does not have any credit history with one of the three nationwide credit reporting companies. An additional 19 million consumers have “unscorable” credit files, meaning their file is thin with an insufficient credit history (9.9 million) or they have stale files lacking any recent credit history (9.6 million). In sum, 45 million consumers may be denied access to credit because they lack credit records that can be scored. While most of these individuals are younger, more than a third of the total number are elderly. More than 65% of some groups segregated by race are elderly and credit invisible.  People who are credit invisible or unscorable generally lack access to quality credit and may encounter a range of issues, from trying to obtain credit to leasing an apartment or medical equipment.    

 Legal Tools: Prophylactic Planning to Prevent Exploitation

• Involve Multiple Family Members/Advisors: Share oversight duties to prevent single-point exploitation.

• Establish a Revocable Living Trust: Transfer assets into a trust to control distribution and avoid probate disputes over control, reducing undue influence opportunities and risk. See our "A Cautionary Tale," cited above.

• Protect Your Estate from Guardianship:  If possible in your state (as it is in Missouri, Ohio, and most states with Trust Codes based on the Uniform Trust Code) draft your estate plan so that third-party guardians (those you didn't nominate or intend) cannot exercise powers over the assets and property of your estate. 

• Draft a General Durable Power of Attorney (GDPOA): Appoint a trusted agent for financial decisions, with safeguards like requiring dual signatures for large transactions.

• Create a Health Care Power of Attorney (HCPOA): Designate someone for medical decisions, preventing abusers from using health vulnerabilities for financial gain.

• Include Spendthrift Clauses in Trusts: Restrict beneficiary access to funds, protecting against impulsive or coerced spending.

• Set Up Advance Directives: Outline end-of-life, aging-in-place, and dementia- care choices and directions to avoid family conflicts that could lead to financial loss or manipulation.

• Appoint a Professional Fiduciary: For complex estates, when necessary, hire a neutral third-party trustee to oversee assets impartially. Consider our blog article, "Selecting a Corporate Trustee: Using the 2025 America’s Most Advisor-Friendly Trust Companies Guide."  Also, review our blog article, "Unpacking Trustees- Primary, Successor, and Special Trustees, Trust Protectors and More," to ensure that you are fully considering your options regarding different types of trustees and fiduciaries appropriate in your situation.

• Regularly Update Estate Documents: Review wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and advance directives annually or after life changes to ensure they reflect current wishes and close loopholes.

• Use Electronic Document Vaults: LegalVault and Docubank allow documents to be stored electronically, and accessed by either healthcare professionals or family members at a time of need, avoiding the necessity of guardianships and conservatorships occurring at times of emergencies.  Our office works with both, and each is commendable. We work more closely with LegalVault for its broader range of services. For more information, see our articles, "The Trouble With Advance Directives," "LegalVault® Offers Solution to Estate Planning Challenges of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies," and "Most Procrastinating on Planning; Those That Plan Don't Protect Their Plans."  

Technology Tips: Leveraging Tools for Security

• Install Fraud-Monitoring Software: Use apps like Eversafe to track accounts and alert for anomalies.

• Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Add this layer to all online accounts, especially banking and email.

• Use Password Managers: Generate and store strong, unique passwords to prevent hacking.

• Scan for Malware Regularly: Run antivirus software and avoid clicking suspicious links.

• Employ AI Scam Detection Apps: Download tools from organizations like the National Council on Aging that detect deepfakes in video calls

• Limit Social Media Sharing: Avoid posting personal details that scammers can use for targeted attacks.

• Use Virtual Credit Cards: For online shopping, generate one-time-use card numbers to minimize data exposure.

Social and Behavioral Strategies: Building a Support Network

• Stay Socially Active: Combat isolation by joining community groups or senior centers—isolated seniors are more vulnerable.

• Discuss Finances Openly: Talk with family or trusted friends about money matters to normalize vigilance and spot issues early.

• Educate on Common Scams: Learn about grandparent scams, where fraudsters pose as relatives in need, and verify by calling known numbers.

• Beware of Urgency Tactics: Scams often pressure with deadlines; always take time to verify.

• Question Unsolicited Offers: Hang up on cold calls promising prizes or investments—research independently.

• Verify Charity Requests: Use sites like Charity Navigator before donating; scammers mimic real organizations.

• Screen Caregivers Thoroughly: Run background checks and notify banks of new in-home help.

• Join Fraud Watch Networks: Participate in programs like AARP's Fraud Watch Network for alerts and helplines (877-908-3360).

• Role-Play Scam Scenarios: Practice responses with family to build confidence in saying "no."

• Monitor for Warning Signs: Watch for sudden will changes, unexplained withdrawals, or confusion about finances.

Reporting and Response: What to Do If Suspicion Arises

• Report Immediately: Use state-specific hotlines, like those in our "Handy Link - Reporting Ohio Adult Abuse or Exploitation," or the National Elder Fraud Hotline (833-372-8311), a free, multilingual service (1-833-372-8311, Mon–Fri 10 a.m.–6 p.m. ET) that connects victims to local resources, investigators, and recovery support. In 2025, it handles over 100,000 calls annually, offering immediate guidance on scams like imposter fraud.

• Contact Adult Protective Services (APS): For suspected abuse, report to local APS for investigation.

• File with the FTC: Report scams at ReportFraud.ftc.gov to help track trends.

• Notify Banks of Changes: Inform financial institutions about lifestyle shifts, like hiring caregivers.

• Seek Legal Advice: Consult an elder law attorney if undue influence is suspected, as outlined in our Ohio cautionary tale article.

• Participate in Community Education: Attend workshops on fraud prevention to stay informed and share knowledge.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while this article has provided a thorough examination of elder financial exploitation risks, state hold laws, and proactive strategies for protection, it is by no means comprehensive. The landscape of scams and legal safeguards evolves rapidly, influenced by technological advances, policy changes, and individual circumstances that no single resource can fully capture. Therefore, readers must remain vigilant, continuously educating themselves through reliable sources like the FTC, AARP, and local elder law attorneys, while regularly evaluating their personal situations to identify potential risks. By combining awareness with tools such as trusted contacts, credit freezes, and customized estate plans, seniors and their families can better safeguard financial independence and thrive while aging in place. For ongoing support, consult a professional and stay informed.  Your security depends on proactive engagement.