Thank you for inviting the Federal Trade Commission to participate in the Department of Justice's elder Justice Initiative federal webinar series my name is Lisa Schiffer Lee and I'm an attorney in the FTC's division of consumer and business education this webinar will discuss scams and identity theft affecting older adults whether you're an older adult yourself or someone who works with older adults will have tips for you the webinar will be divided into two parts first we'll discuss scams looking at the latest trends tips and tools we'll focus on the FTC's pass it on campaign which is designed to get older adults talking about scams pass it on gets you sharing what you know to prevent people who you know from scams for those working with older adults pass it on is a great tool to use at scam jams or presentations in the community in the second part we'll discuss identity theft trends tips and tools focusing on identity theft gov the federal government's one-stop resource to report identity theft and get detailed advice to help you fix problems caused by identity theft let's start with scams what trends are we seeing the FTC's 2016 complaint data shows that imposter scams are the second largest complaint followed by identity theft as the third largest this presentation will focus on those two areas imposter scams and identity theft when it comes to scams how are scammers contacting consumers as you'll see on these pie charts the vast majority of scammers are contacting people by phone 77% in 2016 that's followed by 8% who contacted by email and 6% who contacted by internet while we're all rightfully worried about online scams it's important to recognize that most of these scams are happening by phone if you are in law enforcement or advocacy for older adults knowing that most of these scams occur by phone can be helpful to tailoring your outreach and response now let's look at what trends we're seeing in terms of how scammers are asking people to pay most scammers still request wire transfer 50 percent in 2016 the number of complaints or scammers requested prepaid cards has dropped significantly from 35% in 2014 to 7% in 2016 why does this matter requesting money by wire transfer can be a red flag of a scam if you send money by wire it's almost impossible to get the money back please share this with older adults that you know and work with while we're talking about trends let's look at consumers age a lot of people wonder whether older adults are more likely to be victims of scams the FTC's complaint data suggests that older adults are not more likely to report being victims of scams these pie charts show scam complaints to be fairly evenly distributed by age category so looking at all the trends we see that scammers mainly use a phone request wire transfer and target all age groups knowing these trends
