How to Keep a Loved One With Cognitive Decline Safe From Scams

Key steps to protect vulnerable family members’ finances in an age of rampant fraud

Christina Ianzito,

AARP

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En español

Published June 28, 2024

a woman holding an umbrella over an older woman sitting in a chair on a smartphone

Illustration: Jon Krause

Jessica, an event planner in Massachusetts, was surprised to discover last December that her 74-year-old mother, Joyce, was deep into text conversations with someone Jessica had never heard of. “My heart was racing,” she says, describing what she was thinking after seeing the Google chat exchanges on her mom’s phone on that Christmas Day. “I had no idea what I was looking at.”

She eventually learned that her mom had spent nearly a year communicating with people she thought were the country star Vince Gill and his associates and had sent them more than $400,000. Joyce had even told her friends she was moving to Nashville to be near Gill — her spouse. They called each other “husband” and “wife.”

Before discovering the scam, Jessica (who asked us not to use her or mother’s full names, for privacy reasons), 42, had already begun to worry about her mom’s cognitive decline, which a doctor recently diagnosed.

The crime and its repercussions

Vince Gill’s response

We reached out to Vince Gill, through his managers, to let him know about Joyce’s experience and to ask him how he may be working to combat these disturbingly common celebrity impersonation scams. This is a statement from Gill’s management team:

It is heartbreaking when one of Vince Gill’s perfectly wonderful supporters is taken advantage of by online scammers. Dealing with these unscrupulous entities is an ongoing battle for nearly anyone in the public eye, particularly entertainment celebrities. We flag these fake accounts as they come to our attention and also make it discernible which social media accounts are Vince’s official outlets. Those outlets are managed by a team of professionals. We do our best to make it clear to all of Vince’s supporters that he would never contact anyone directly, particularly through social media channels. If anyone contacts someone saying they are Vince Gill, rest assured they are not.

The scam began in the fall of 2022, after Joyce, a longtime Gill fan, posted a cheerful message on his Instagram page — “hope you come to Boston!” She then was inundated with “multiple people reaching out to pretend that they were him, his daughter or his manager,” who’d ask her to talk to them on private chat platforms like Telegram, according to Jessica. (Scammers inundate many stars’ social media accounts; I posted a simple “love this!” on one of Gill’s Facebook posts and received multiple entreaties to chat privately from bogus Gill fan accounts.)

Jessica, Joyce’s only child, has spent the months since trying to sort through the wreckage that is now her mother’s finances. She’s convinced that Joyce was more vulnerable to these scammers because of her cognitive issues, which may have clouded her judgment and made her more likely to respond to some wild requests. At one point “Gill” told Joyce that he needed money because he was getting a divorce from his wife, Amy Grant, who had frozen his bank accounts.

Jessica and a social worker staged an intervention. She says, “I took the checkbooks, the credit cards, everything, and I said, ‘Here’s an allowance for now.’” She’s been trying to track all the money lost on a detailed spreadsheet, including a series of loans Joyce took out to pay the scammers. She’s also wrestling with the tax implications and other fallout from the crime. “Even now, months later, I’m still finding [losses], so it’s kind of a moving target,” she says.

Cognitive impairment and fraud

Someone certainly doesn’t need to have dementia to become a scam victim. “It’s important to understand that this can and does happen regardless of cognitive impairment,” notes Kathy Stokes, AARP’s director of fraud prevention programs. “These fraud criminals have a playbook. And the playbook works against anybody, regardless of age, education, any other demographic characteristic.”

That said, “absolutely,” one of the first signs of cognitive decline is a change in financial behavior, notes Sarah Lock, AARP’s senior vice president for policy and brain health. “You may notice that the person who’s been meticulous in their financial affairs suddenly becomes less so.”

An analysis of more than 81,000 Medicare beneficiaries’ health data found that people who were later diagnosed with dementia were more likely to experience drops in their credit scores and miss bill payments than those who weren’t. Problems started as early as six years before the diagnosis, according to the 2020 Johns Hopkins University study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

And a 2016 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment are more susceptible to scams, particularly when they displayed slower processing speed and lower short-term memory. Co-author Duke Han, Ph.D. a professor of psychology and family medicine at University of Southern California, explains in an email that if an older adult is cognitively slower, they “may have difficulty keeping track in a high time-pressure situation.” With memory issues, they “may be more easily led to misremember events or facts. These cognitive difficulties can reflect brain changes that make it more difficult for an older adult to discern a scam from a legitimate situation.”

Ian Bednowitz, 46, general manager for identity and privacy at Gen Digital, maker of Norton and LifeLock identity theft protection, among other products, also saw his late mother become a fraud victim when she had cognitive decline. In 2015 her paid caregiver stole her personal information, including her Social Security number as well as balance transfer checks from her mail. The caregiver wrote the checks to herself, which meant she took out a fraudulent loan for thousands of dollars against his mother’s credit card limit. The unusual charges led him to check her credit report and “my heart just sank, because there were all kinds of loans and credit cards and things in her name that she had nothing to do with, with high balances on them. It was tens of thousands of dollars.” (Authorities did eventually catch the criminal, whom he says was part of a crime syndicate that preyed on vulnerable older people.)

Bednowitz says he wishes he’d been aware of the different steps he could have taken that may have helped prevent the crime.

Where to begin

If you’re concerned, it’s crucial to “start to talk about money, start to talk about scams,” says Darius Kingsley, head of consumer banking practices at Chase. “That sounds obvious, but a lot of older Americans — that’s a generational thing — don’t want to talk about money. So you’ve got to explain the threat [of scams] and tell them you want to help keep them safe. You’re not trying to be intrusive. You’re not trying to be condescending.” (See below for the scam-prevention basics that you can emphasize.)

Some older adults who are accustomed to independence may resist their adult child becoming involved in their financial affairs. “My mom was very stubborn,” says Bednowitz. “She hated me taking care of anything for her.” But if he approached her carefully — suggesting he pay her bills without having control of her account, for example — “she was OK being helped. I think it has to feel like help and not control.”

How intrusive you need to be will depend on your parent’s level of cognitive decline. In an ideal world, they would have designated someone they trust — maybe their child — to serve as their financial advocate under a power of attorney before they become unable to make financial decisions. For that to happen, though, “the parent has to really trust you as the individual,” says Bednowitz, who notes the sad fact that when elder theft is perpetrated by someone the victim knows, it’s most often a family member.

More ways to protect a loved one with (or without) cognitive decline from fraud

“We hear from our customers all the time where [they] were on the road to being scammed, and they caught it within the family,” says Kingsley. “Very often that’s because the adult child has been proactive.”

Secure all personal documents in the home. To avoid fraud perpetrated through stolen documents, as Bednowitz’s mom experienced, make sure sensitive information — tax returns, passports, bank statements — is out of sight, whether it’s in a physical safe or only accessible online. Bednowitz says he began redirecting his mother’s mail to a paid service that scans and digitizes it for him to view online, “so it would come out of the hands of the caregivers.” (She had access to it as well.)

Set up “unusual activity” alerts on your loved one’s financial accounts. Different banks have different kinds of available account-activity alerts, which allow the account holder to receive texts, emails, or mobile push notifications for large withdrawals and/or other activity. It’s a good idea to sign up for all available alerts, which you can do by logging into the account online or through the bank’s app.

Ask if you can receive copies of their bank statements. Lock says that when her father was experiencing cognitive decline, she arranged to have a second set of financial statements sent to her, “so I could watch the patterns of your accounts to see if anything unusual was happening.”

Consider using a service that can identify potential fraud. You can help your loved one subscribe to services like Aura, Identity Guard, and Lifelock by Norton that alert you to potential identity theft, such as someone applying for a credit card or loan in your name. AARP members can receive a discount on some Norton identity theft protection products.

Ask to be your loved one’s trusted contact. You can be added as a “trusted contact” at their financial firm (they may have already added you when they opened the account). You won’t be able to access the money, but it allows the financial institution to alert you if they notice suspicious activity.

Before problems arise

It’s important to plan ahead for potential cognitive decline and other health issues by making sure your finances remain in safe hands as you age. “You’re setting yourself up for an easier time, and helping the people you love, if you think about it now,” notes Lock. Find out more at AARP’s Thinking Ahead Roadmap, cosponsored by the University of Minnesota.

Help them freeze their credit report. A freeze prevents anyone from opening a credit account in their name; they can quickly unfreeze it if they do need someone to access it — to get a loan approved, for instance.

Set up robocall blocking and SMS blocking. Scammers often try to reach potential victims through illegal robocalls (some robocalls are legal, but only if they are for informational or noncommercial purposes). Your phone service provider may offer free robocall-blocking tools. The website of CTIA, a Washington-based trade association that represents the U.S. wireless industry, has lists of apps for Android and Apple devices that block robocalls and spam texts.

Share scam-prevention basics. Tell your loved one about these keys to avoiding fraud — rules that everyone should keep in mind.

1. Be very wary of all unsolicited communications. Don’t answer calls or texts from unknown numbers. “I tell my own parents, ‘Be inherently suspicious of phone calls or random texts,’” says Kingsley. “You’ve got to train them to get their guard up — don’t assume that if someone is contacting them it’s legit.”

2. Keep your personal/sensitive information private. If someone wants your bank account details or Social Security number, think twice. Make sure your social media accounts are private, and don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know.

3. Talk to someone you trust if something seems off. It’s important for people to have a go-to person who can be a sounding board — whether it’s you or a friend or neighbor, says Kingsley. He suggests telling a loved one, “Before you panic, before you give out personal information or bank account details, talk to me about it or talk to your trusted circle, and say, ‘Hey, does this seem right? Does it seem legit?’” And if the person who contacted you says not to talk to anyone about your interaction? That’s a huge red flag that you’re dealing with a scammer and should tell someone.

Video: 2 Reasons Why Just Talking to Scammers on the Phone is Dangerous

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Christina Ianzito covers scams and fraud, and is the books editor for aarp.org and AARP The Magazine. Also a longtime travel writer and editor, she received a 2020 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.