The not so bad news: Elder fraud complaints in California, adjusted for the population, fell slightly from 2022 to 2023. The bad news: California is one of the 10 U.S. states where elder fraud complaints are most prevalent.
This is according to a new report by All About Cookies, a company that conducts research and compiles reports about internet privacy and security, which drew on statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Data was not immediately available for San Diego.
While tracking complaints offers a different kind of insight compared to tracking numbers of actual crimes, the change in complaints over time, and broken down by state, does show that residents of some states are more likely than others to contact authorities to say they may be victims of fraud.
California’s rate of reported elder fraud: how it compares
Here are two key findings from the report, as they relate to elder fraud complaints trends in California:
First, the numbers:
In 2022, there were 145 elder fraud complaints per 100,000 adults aged 60 and older.
In 2023, that fell to 142 complaints per 100,000 adults aged 60 and older. The FBI, which provided the underlying data, defines elders as people 60 and over.
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That’s a 2 percent drop, year over year.
Second, this is how California compares to other states: In terms of number of complaints per 100,000 elders in 2023, California was in the top 10. (Tracking complaints adjusted for the population, instead of numbers of complaints, allows for a better comparison of trends across states with different sized populations.)
Arizona: 289
Nevada: 264
Colorado: 242
Alaska: 213
Utah: 179
South Dakota: 172
Washington: 168
Washington, D.C. 158
California: 142
Maryland: 142
These are the five states with the lowest reported rates of elder fraud in 2023, defined as complaints per 100,000:
Mississippi: 64
Louisiana: 71
North Dakota: 75
Wisconsin: 77
West Virginia: 78
These numbers, without more context, merely offer one window into a state’s residents’ measured exposure to fraud.
There are at least a few explanations for why one state might have a higher or lower rate of complaints than another.
These rates may be a reflection of greater or reduced awareness around elder fraud — which would result in more or fewer complaints. They could also reflect where scammers are focusing their efforts, for example, on people living in states where seniors statistically have a higher net worth.
But one noteworthy detail emerges when looking across states — the rate of complaints varies greatly. They are not all clustered together. Some states saw significantly more complaints than others by a factor of more than four: Mississippi had 64 complaints per 100,000 elders living in that state, while Arizona had 289.
Where reports of elder fraud fell
California’s complaints fell 2 percent, year over year, from 2022 to 2023. While the needle moved in the right direction, other states posted much larger drops.
Maine and Vermont each saw a 16 percent decrease in complaints, and New Jersey’s complaints fell 15 percent. In all, 12 states saw larger drops in complaints, year over year, than California.
In nine states, elder fraud appears to becoming particularly prevalent, with reported scams rising around 20 percent or more, according to this data:
Arizona: 36 percent increase in complaints per 100,000 people age 60 and over
Kansas: 20 percent
Mississippi: 19 percent
Oregon: 19 percent
North Carolina: 20 percent
Rhode Island: 22 precent
Texas: 20 percent
Utah: 23 percent
Washington: 19 percent
Deeper data, from the FBI
The FBI issued its own report in April that found that elder fraud reports increased nationwide by 14 percent in 2023, and “associated losses increased by about 11 percent,” the agency wrote.
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The agency also pointed out that the rate of complaints is likely lower than the rate of crimes.
“Elder fraud is probably a more insidious threat than the report shows,” the FBI wrote in April. “Many of these crimes likely go unreported, and, as the report states, ‘only about half’ of the fraud scam complaints submitted to (the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center) in 2023 included victims’ ages.”
That same report found that California ranked first in terms of both the number of complaints made and the amount of money claimed stolen. Florida and Texas ranked second.
Last year, the amount of money stolen due to senior scams that targeted Americans who are 60 and over averaged $33,915 per incident, the FBI report said.
The FBI also released statistics about what kinds of scams target people 60 and older.
Tech support scams were by far the most prevalent last year with 17,696 reports nationwide.
For four other kinds of scams, complaints were in the ballpark of around roughly 7,000 each: personal data breaches, nonpayment and nondelivery scams, investment scams and romance scams. For a description of these and other sketchy schemes that target older adults, go to: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/common-frauds-and-scams/elder-fraud
