In what he called, “the largest elder fraud enforcement action in our nation’s history,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday state and federal charges against more than 200 alleged con artists who prey upon the elderly.
Many Americans are familiar with the endless barrage of impossibly good investment opportunities, claims of sweepstakes wins, and other scam solicitations mailed to their doorstep and clogging up their email inbox.
Sessions painted a picture of a growing problem of “elder fraud” in the criminal underworld. “Each year, an estimated $3 billion are stolen – defrauded, from millions of American seniors through ‘grandparents scams,’ fake prizes, even threats,” he said, continuing:
Criminals prey on vulnerable Americans, including our seniors, to steal their hard-earned savings, often a lifetime of savings, and their peace of mind. And this threat seems to be growing. We think there is no doubt of it. The Senate Aging Committee’s fraud hotline received twice as many reports in 2016 as they did in 2015.
According to Sessions, the 200 defendants in this sweep have defrauded over one million Americans, particularly the elderly, of nearly $500 million. Forty of the 200 will face federal charges. Sessions claimed the postal service executed 14 search warrants Wednesday alone. The ongoing operation not only partnered federal and state law enforcement, but enlisted international partners to help take down transnational elder fraud rings.
At his press conference at the main Department of Justice (DOJ) building in Washington, DC, Sessions noted raids are still being conducted in Vancouver, Canada. He thanked:
Our postal inspection service, the FBI, its Los Angeles Field Office, the Federal Trade Commission, and its consumer sentinel database, and the Vancouver Police Department, United States attorney’s offices in the Eastern District of New York and the Southern District of Iowa, our elder justice coordinators, and all of our state, local, and international partners.
Chief Postal Inspector Guy Cottrell joined Sessions at the DOJ press conference. “This time, we are not only going after the fraudsters. We’re going after the enablers as well,” he explained.
Cottrell explained his agency’s efforts to dismantle the elder fraud industry from top to bottom, saying:
No fraud scheme is successful without a well written and persuasive solicitation. A Montana writer who had been creating solicitations for every fraudster in the sweepstakes industry for more than 20 years has been charged.
Once written, the solicitation most be printed. We filed a complaint against a Las Vegas printer that was well aware of what they were printing was designed to be used in deceptive mailings to try and deceive consumers into paying a fee and believe they already won a valuable prize.
The next step for the scammers is to maintain a mailing list. Two list brokers recently pled guilty for conspiracy to commit mail fraud for providing mailing lists to deceptive sweepstakes and price games. And then of course there are the mailers. They played guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
The press conference also included the testimony of Angela Stancik of Houston, Texas, whose grandmother took her own life after being the victim of elder fraud, FBI Acting Deputy Director David Bowdich, FTC Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
According to an accompanying DOJ fact-sheet, “Elder fraud complaints may be filed with the FTC at www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov or at 877-FTC-HELP.”
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