Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – May 1, 2024 – An FBI report release on Tuesday, April 30, says that Americans over 60 years old were scammed out of $3.4 billion in 2023, an increase of 14 percent from the previous year.

Over 101,000 victims aged 60 and over reported this kind of crime to FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2023.

In Jonesboro, scams involving people over the age of 60 occur on an almost weekly basis, according to Jonesboro police crime reports.

A couple of examples from 2023 include:

In June 2023, a 68-year-old Jonesboro man told police he was contacted by someone identifying himself as being from Norton Antivirus saying he owed $350 on his account. After giving banking information to the person, $9,500 was drained from the account, according to a Jonesboro police report.

In August, an 85-year-old Jonesboro woman fell victim to a scam that cost her more than $13,000. The scam ended when she was asked to sell a kidney to send more money, according to a Jonesboro police report.

The woman told police she was contacted by the suspect in early June. She said that over time she believed they were in a relationship, but they never met as the suspect claimed to be in the military and was deployed.

In July, the victim said, the suspect began requesting money from her, which she began sending.

In April 2023, Jonesboro Police Chief Rick Elliott gave a presentation to senior citizens at Highland Drive Baptist Church on how to avoid being scammed.

When someone in Jonesboro gets scammed by an out-of-state or out-of-country entity, people ask him what the police can do about it.

“Nothing,” he said.

According to the bureau, the annual report on elder fraud — or fraud that explicitly targets older Americans’ money or cryptocurrency — aims to raise the public’s awareness of this issue and to prevent future and repeat incidents.

“Combatting the financial exploitation of those over 60 years of age continues to be a priority of the FBI,” wrote FBI Assistant Director Michael D. Nordwall, who leads the Bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division, 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.”

And elder fraud is probably a more insidious threat than the report shows. Many of these crimes likely go unreported, and, as the report states, “only about half” of the fraud scam complaints submitted to IC3 in 2023 included victims’ ages, the report said.