Two ASU professors have spent the last three years studying a topic fraught with misconceptions — fraudulent crimes against the elderly.
Criminology and criminal justice professors Michael Reisig and Kristy Holtfreter have studied different aspects of consumer fraud and theft in past years, so when the National Institute of Justice offered an opportunity to apply for funding to study consumer crimes on the elderly in 2010, the two professors saw a chance to study an aspect of fraud they had not looked at before
The intent of the study was to determine what the risk factors were and how common fraud among the elderly is — specifically shopping fraud and other types of consumer fraud. The data collected is intended to help institutions advocating for the victims in fraud cases.
The study, which concluded in 2013, is the first to specifically analyze data involving shopping fraud that targets the elderly population and how widespread the fraud is.
Reisig said there are many different aspects to scams involving the elderly including everything from theft to mistreatment by family or medical personnel.
After submitting the application for the National Institute of Justice grant and getting approved in 2010, the research for the project was conducted over the summer of 2011.
Questions were given to a company in Glendale who called 2,000 seniors ages 60 and over and asked them questions regarding consumer activities, such as purchases and services done by others, over the course of the past year. The study used 1,000 seniors from Arizona and 1,000 seniors from Florida to gather the data on how often elderly citizens fall victim to fraud.
The states of Arizona and Florida were chosen for the study due to their higher-than-average number of senior citizens in comparison to the rest of the nation, with Arizona having a 19.3 percent elderly population and Florida’s elderly making up 23.4 percent of its citizens.
The crimes the study considered constituted anything from telemarketing fraud to in-home repairs, such as someone overcharging for mowing the lawn or changing a light bulb.
“It’s something that has kind of flown by the radar, that hasn’t always been given much attention in terms of crimes,” Holtfreter said.
The study found that nearly 21 percent of the elders surveyed reported that they knew they were being targeted for consumer crimes, and about 25 percent of those targeted for crimes were actually victimized.
Holtfreter said that the issue of elder abuse is often not covered as it should be because people view the elderly as vulnerable.
“Oftentimes I think that there might be a perception that people who fall victim to consumer fraud, whether they’re elderly or of a different age group, might have done something to bring that on themselves, and it doesn’t necessarily get taken as seriously as it should,” Holtfreter said.
Reisig said while the elderly are not easy targets, they are the most targeted group of people for consumer scams. Reisig said the rate of victimization is lower in the elderly population than most people assume, but due to the high rate of targeted seniors they are often seen as a particularly vulnerable population.
“What is more accurate to say is that the elderly are targeted by fraudsters for victimization at a much higher rate than the general population,” Reisig said. “So in other words, the criminals out there, they’re looking at the elderly and they’re trying to rip them off at a much higher rate, but the elderly don’t fall victims at a much higher rate than any other population segment.
“This idea that the poor elderly are victimized so easily is a myth,” Reisig said. “These are individuals who have lived full lives, who have a lifetime of experience and they’ve developed a pretty sophisticated understanding of a deal that’s too good to be true.”
Though the study found that the elderly surveyed are no more likely to fall victim to consumer fraud than any other group of people, Reisig said he hopes their research will help people to better understand what resources are available for help in cases of fraud.
“What we’re really hoping for is that agencies like the Arizona Area Agency on Aging and those types of places will look at our research and use it to not only get their message out but also better understand the dynamics of the victimization,” Reisig said.
Arizona AARP state director David Mitchell said senior fraud is a large issue for the AARP, making protecting seniors a high priority.
“When I think about the perpetrators of the crime, it shocks me how heinous their crimes are. That’s what really stands out,” Mitchell said.
Reisig said their study hopes to change the way people view consumer fraud and bring greater awareness to prevention of crimes against seniors. Associations such as the Taskforce Against Senior Abuse and Arizona Adult Protective Services work to promote awareness and programs to help seniors in scam situations, but Reisig said he was surprised by how little people knew about the programs available for help.
“If anything good comes from our study, hopefully it will be that those programs will get a little more creative in how they get their message out,” Reisig said.
After their study wrapped in 2013, Reisig and Holtfreter published a paper and have been presenting their findings to different groups around the world.
“In addition to conducting a study … we also included in that grant a conference to showcase some of the research findings and bring together the people who are working in different areas affecting elderly residents,” Holtfreter said.
The conference took place in September at ASU, but Holtfreter and Reisig also presented related findings in November at an American Society of Criminology conference and will present another paper at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden, in June.
Attorney General Tom Horne was the keynote speaker at the September conference where Reisig and Holtfreter presented their research.
Horne founded the Taskforce Against Senior Abuse shortly after coming into office in 2010.
“Abuse and neglect of older adults largely remains unrecognized and treated as an unspoken problem,” Horne said at the conference.
Research such as Reisig and Holtfreter’s is used by organizations such as the task force to better advocate for elders’ rights and identify what the issues of neglect and fraud are.
“There are things that we all do that are perfectly legal things that increase our risk of being victimized,” Reisig said.
Reisig said that everyday things such as not opening suspicious emails, throwing away strange mail and not engaging with people who make unsolicited phone calls are some of the simplest ways to reduce chances of fraud.
“Don’t give them a chance,” Reisig said. “These guys are masters of persuasion, they know what words to use, they know how to put it together so don’t even read their letter or their advertisement that they’re sending you.”
Contact the reporter at cacoope6@asu.edu
