Action 9: How to talk to your aging parents about scams

Scammers like to target senior citizens. One -- they can be trusting. Two -- they may have more life savings. And three -- many tend to be private, even with family.

Action 9 attorney Jason Stoogenke explains how to talk to your aging parents about scams.

Go over the basic red flags for many scams:

• Bad spelling or punctuation.
• The person contacting you wants you to pay in some unusual way, like gift cards or wiring money.
• They try to play on your emotions -- typically fear.
• Or the opposite -- they promise something that sounds too good to be true.
• They reach out -- out of the blue -- and say they’re with a government agency or your bank.
• They pretend to be your grandchild, which is a big one, especially now with AI.

Teach your parents what not to do. Do not:

• Answer calls, emails, and texts you don’t recognize.
• Click links you didn’t ask for.
• Or share personal information with anyone you don’t know and trust, especially if they reached out to you, instead of the other way around.

Prevention: Just in case your parents fall for a con:

• See if your parents will let you keep an eye on their accounts.
• Sign your parents up for the national Do Not Call Registry.  That will weed out ‘some’ calls, but not all.
• AARP suggests that you give your parents an actual refusal script, just in case they do pick up.
• If they write checks, use gel pens, and mail the checks at the post office.
• Freeze their credit, which is important.

Ensure they know the dangers of social media, especially how scammers can use stock photos and other tricks to pretend to be someone they’re not.

©2025 Cox Media Group