Is it a scam? 

I hate to start of the New Year on  a negative note but I had a situation last week that reminded me how important this scam “industry” is when it comes to us seniors.

Last week I got an unusual email from FedEx. I’m not exactly sure what caught my attention but it did. It had all the right information on it including the FedEx trademarked logo and colors, shipping date, tracking number, shipper location, etc., yet something just didn’t seem right about it not to mention  the fact that neither my wife nor I recognized anything on the FedEx email as something that either of us had ordered.

So, what did I do about it? First of all, I set it aside until this morning so I could refer to it for this column  and call the FedEx office re scams. There was no number to call on the email re scams so I had to look that up on the web. So I called, went through a bunch of menus until I got the right one, gave the Tracking ID # and got a computer message back saying it is a legitimate  order which is now due on January 11th. Now I’m really curious of what this 1.6 pound package is!

So why even write about scams this morning if the FedEx email wasn’t a real scam? Two reasons: first, scams are a huge issue for us seniors. The FBI estimates that senior citizens lose more than $3 billion each year to financial scams including romance scams and lottery and sweepstakes scams! The second reason is that it’s personal to me. Long time readers of this column may remember an article or two that I wrote about a scam that actually took the life of my mother-in-law!

While she was living with us at the farm she got a scam call from someone who said they were from the IRS and that she owed over $5000 in back taxes and that they were going to shut down her bank account if she didn’t authorize immediate payment. That call was in mid morning; she was not herself the rest of the day. And the next morning, after she missed her early morning coffee with us, my wife went to check  on her and found her dead in her apartment from an apparent stroke caused by a huge spike in her blood pressure! So senior scams are not only BIG business that we need to watch out for, they can even be deadly… literally! Here are a few types of scams from the Federal Trade Commission website:

• Charity Scams
• Elder Financial Exploitation
• Telephone and Internet Scams
• Computer-Internet Scams
• Identity Theft and Medical Identity Theft
• Investment Fraud
• Unexpected Life Events
• Scams that Target Homeowners
• Scams that Target Veterans

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list at all; I’d guess its just the tip of the iceberg! 

There are all kinds of resources online to help seniors with this fraud issue, so if you’re concerned about it, a little bit of time doing online research can give you some good insight to whatever you’re facing. 

Actually, it seems as though multiple federal agencies are spending our tax dollars trying to protect us from this modern day plague. It looks like a lot of government overlap to me!

At any rate, I hope you have a wonderful, healthy and fraud free 2025.

Thanks for reading All About Seniors… see you next week!

Bill Milby is a Director of Visiting Angels® of Central Georgia, a non-medical, living assistance service for seniors. If you have questions or comments about this column you can reach him at william.mercylink@gmail.com or search for us at  https://www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsofCentralGA