Elderly Hoosiers reported $26 million in financial losses due to fraud and scams in 2023

Hoosiers over the age of 60 lost nearly $26.5 million to fraud and scams last year, according to the FBI's annual Elder Fraud Report released Tuesday.

The multimillion-dollar losses are attributable to roughly 1,170 cases in which Indiana senior citizens fell victim to financial exploitation due to fraud involving illegal call centers, extortion, investment schemes, identity theft and data breaches, romance scams and other crimes.

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The report, produced by the agency's Internet Crime Complaint Center, examines the financial exploitation of senior citizens by individuals and criminal organizations. The FBI says it receives thousands of complaints annually about a variety of scams, including many targeting elderly people.

By publishing the report, the agency says it hopes to prevent the victimization of senior citizens by educating the public about frauds and scams targeting people over 60. It also hopes to stop the revictimization of those who've already become entangled in such schemes.

"Combatting the financial exploitation of those over 60 years of age continues to be a priority of the FBI," Michael D. Nordwall, assistant director the FBI's Criminal Investigation Division, said in the report. "Along with our partners, we continually work to aid victims and to identify and investigate the individuals and criminal organizations that perpetrate these schemes and target the elderly."

Nationally, people over the age of 60 suffered more than $3.4 billion financial losses due to scams, an 11% increase in reported losses over 2022, according to FBI stats. Complaints filed by senior citizens also rose by roughly 14%.

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Tech support fraud was the No. 1 crime reported by individuals over 60, while investment scams continued to the be the costliest. According to the report, these scams generally involve complex financial crimes that are often viewed as low-risk with guaranteed returns. They can include Ponzi and pyramid schemes, trust-based scams and real estate investing.

Most of the fraud-related financial losses Hoosiers suffered in 2023 involved investment schemes, according to the report. Those losses topped nearly $12 million.

Hoosiers also reported losses stemming from scams and fraud related to tech support ($8.9 million), compromised business emails ($4.3 million), extortion ($4.2 million), and confidence and romance scams ($3.4 million).

As with their counterparts nationally, more and more Hoosiers over 60 are falling for tech support or call center scams, which make up the bulk of the complaints Hoosiers submitted to the FBI last year. Call center fraud falls into two categories: tech and customer support and government impersonation.

In September the FBI warned that scammers were targeting senior citizens through the so-called "Phantom Hacker" scam. Fraudsters pose as a tech or customer support representatives from legitimate companies, financial institutions or federal agencies to gain access to bank accounts or coerce victims to initiate wire transfers.

In these schemes, fraudsters contact victims through text, phone calls, emails or online pop-up windows and instruct them to call a number for assistance. The FBI said some senior citizens have taken drastic measures to cover losses related to these crimes, including borrowing from friends and family, remortgaging homes and emptying retirement accounts.

Read the full report and find out more about the scams impacting Hoosiers.

Contact IndyStar investigative reporter Alexandria Burris at aburris@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @allyburris.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Scammers took $26 million from elderly Hoosiers in 2023, FBI says