CFPB Warns of ‘Quadrupled’ Reports of Elder Financial Abuse

We stay alert, informed and implement safeguards to protect our senior borrowers. It takes all of us to prevent fraud, and the most important player is you. Read the RMD article below about the increase in elder financial abuse.

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is warning of reported widespread financial abuse of seniors ranging in sources from offshore scammers to immediate family members. The agency detailed its findings in a new blog at the agency’s website, and has released a dedicated report to inform the public about the rampancy of the issue.

In response to the increasing prevalence of the issue, financial institutions are, “filing hundreds of thousands of reports with the federal government about these suspicions,” and the agency’s new report highlights key details of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) that the institutions have submitted to it.

Among the data revealed in the report, there is an increasing level of frequency in financial scams targeting older Americans.

“SAR filings on elder financial exploitation quadrupled from 2013 to 2017,” the CFPB said in its blog post announcing the report’s release. “In 2017, financial institutions filed 63,500 SARs reporting elder financial abuse. Yet these SARs likely represent only a tiny fraction of the actual 3.5 million incidents of elder financial exploitation estimated to have happened that year.”

The reports are also not limited only to banks or credit unions, but also extend to money services businesses used by consumers to wire money. Older adults aged between 70-79 reportedly lost around $43,300, but the figure of average loss grows to around $50,000 in cases where the victim knew their scammer.”

Click here to read the full RMD article.

Click here to read the CFPB blog post.