An ongoing wave of phone scams targeted at senior citizens yielded more than 3,700 complaints to the state attorney general’s office in 2016 — a number authorities said may only be a fraction of the actual scams and attempts.
The callers in these scams often identify themselves as Internal Revenue Service agents, said Marguerite Sweeney, the section chief for telephone privacy at the state Office of the Attorney General. They demand payments on fictitious taxes or fees. They threaten victims with jail time or violence, and they use the powers of the internet — a Google Earth search that can show a caller what a victim’s house looks like, for example — to make the stakes seem real.
Most of the complaints — more than 3,500 — tallied by the state attorney general’s office were categorized as do-not-call complaints as opposed to criminal ones. Monroe County saw 121, the fifth-most of any county in Indiana, of those do-not-call complaints.
Senior citizens often find themselves the targets of these scams for a variety of reasons, including generational gaps between how people perceive strange callers, Sweeney said.
“Number one is they tend to answer the phone," she said, mentioning that younger people often let unknown numbers go to voicemail. “They were taught to be polite and listen. It doesn’t occur to seniors that people across the globe would be calling them to scam them.”
Much of the problem originates outside of Indiana and even the United States, Sweeney said. Case in point: She saw complaints drop sharply in October after a crackdown on phone scammers in India. As a New York Times story earlier this month detailed, police in Thane, India, took down a scam-focused, 700-employee call center and arrested its 70 highest-ranking employees. The Times noted the scheme had cost Americans $100 million since 2013.
Still, the scams remain a problem in Indiana, and it is significant enough that the Indiana State Police’s Bloomington post issued a press release last week to raise awareness of the IRS agent scams and similar scams. ISP Sgt. Curt Durnil said in an interview the international nature of these scams makes it difficult for local law enforcement to do much.
“Where did the crime occur — did it occur in Bloomington or where the call originated? Who will prosecute the case?” he wondered. “How do you go after someone online who scammed someone out of thousands of dollars?”
Thousands isn’t an exaggeration, he said. Phone scams are nothing new, but he said he believes they’ve gotten worse recently. They used to come in waves with criminals demanding a few hundred dollars, but in the past few years, he’s heard more about larger frauds — often in the $1,000 to $2,000 range up to as much as $6,000 — and the crime seems constant instead of fluctuating, possibly because information on the internet makes it easier than ever for scammers to pass themselves off as officials.
What he hears about may only be a drop in the bucket, he said.
“We’re hearing about it on a weekly basis, but the problem is I think a lot of people who have been scammed are too embarrassed to report it,” Durnil said.
Sweeney agreed. She said she's been doing do-not-call enforcement for 15 years, and the understanding has always been that complaints only equal a fraction of the total calls.
The attorney general’s office offers an online reporting option, which she hopes encourages complaints by people who have been scammed and may be too embarrassed to call. She also noted the IRS encourages victims of IRS-related phone scams to report them online to the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
Durnil said the most helpful thing authorities can do is maintain public awareness. If people know the scams exist and how to handle calls they’re unsure of — they should take their time and not make hasty decisions — they may be able to stem the tide.
“I tell people all the time that even a bad plan is better than no plan at all,” he said. “What I tell people is ‘Don’t get pressured to do something right on the phone.’ If you feel pressured, something is wrong.”
