Stopping scammers

About 5 million seniors experience financial abuse and exploitation every year. From phone call scams to fraudulent emails many face the possibility of these deceiving tactics. Virginia Morgan, a local resident of over 30 years in the Foothills, lost over $800 this month after falling victim to another type of scam involving mail letters.

According to her son, Timothy Morgan, he discovered her money was missing after seeing a trend of money drawings from her bank. He also noticed many written checks to unknown associations.

According to Timothy, “She’s entered to win one million dollars in a drawing we can’t find any information on.”

Virginia received her Medicare card through the mail which turned out to be false and useless. Timothy is working to help his mother financially recover from the letters he claims deceived her.

Many of the letters have fancy attention grabbing statements such as, donate $2 and you’ll receive $4,000 in the bank. Virginia says some of these letters were deceiving claiming they needed donations for starving children. Those letters were fraud too.

Local law attorney Ryan Hengl says there are laws that protect these fake associations from delivering fraudulent letters but tracking them down is where it gets tricky.

According to Hengl, “Finding that particular person is a mountain of effort but even once they are found coordinating with that countries government for extradition, prosecution, it’s a tremendous effort.”

In an attempt to protect his mother, Timothy changed her phone number and a couple of matters in the bank. He also reached out to the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office, who told him that they had stopped collecting this information because it was overwhelming.

YCSO has resources and alerts to keep the community aware of scam alerts on their website. In the end Timothy wants to see change and a stop to these scammers targeting seniors.