Kansas Attorney
General warns seniors of scams
By Charlene Scott
Special to the Register
Editor’s note: The following is reprinted with permission
from the
Thieves have learned that “It’s 10 times
easier to steal money with a pen than it is with a gun,” Kansas Attorney
General Paul Morrison warned participants at the 2007 Senior/Boomer Expo April
26 in
Several hundred seniors attended the annual
Expo with the theme “Older Americans: Making Choices for a Healthier Future.”
Morrison told those seniors how they can make better choices when thieves prey
on them with all sorts of schemes by mail, phone, and in person.
“One of the things my office is involved with
is trying to get the laws changed to have more meaningful penalties for those
who take advantage of the elderly and dependent adults,” said Morrison, a
native of
A 27-year veteran of
law enforcement, Morrison told the story of a widow who inherited a million
dollars after her stockbroker husband died.
It was a terrible time for her when she lost her husband, but a man and
his wife and two grown children suddenly came into her life and befriended her.
“We don’t know how the family found out about her, but the next
thing we knew, she bought them a Ford pickup and paid cash for a $165,000 home
for the son. She bought antiques for
them, and by the time we got involved, she had given them about half a million
dollars.
“I honestly believe
they would have taken all of the money away from her if we had not charged them
with theft by deception,” Morrison declared.
“The case went to a
jury trial that lasted a week. Their
defense was, ‘What did we do that was wrong?’
The jurors said, ‘No, you can’t do that to somebody who is vulnerable.’”
The attorney general
warned the seniors to beware of charity fraud, especially from phone callers
who claim to represent certain charities.
“Many times, the
charities don’t even exist,” he said. “I
always say to them, ‘Send me some information.’
Many times people are ‘fishing’ for your Social Security and credit card
numbers. Don’t ever give them – or your
driver’s license number – to someone who calls you.”
Sweepstakes scams are
sweeping the state too, with callers claiming that seniors have won “$40,000
from a Canadian lottery,” Morrison cautioned.
“Now how would your
name get into a Canadian lottery?” he asked, leaning over the podium set up at
the
“They will tell you to send them $150 as a
processing fee,” he added. “Other people
will try to gain access to your finances by getting on a joint checking account
with you. Sometimes even relatives will
try to dip into your account.”
Morrison, who
prosecuted the nation’s first Internet serial killer, John Robinson, called the
Internet “a massive playground for crooks.”
“The scams that go on never cease to amaze
me,” he said. “Not a week goes by that
these e-mails don’t come into the computer in my office, the attorney general’s
office! I have had 200 scams sent to me
in the past year.”
Since many seniors
don’t even own a computer, thieves have learned to go through dumpsters and
trash cans searching for credit card bills and receipts – and the name of the
person on those bills and receipts, Morrison warned.
“Identity theft is an
industry, a massive problem in this country,” he said.
Named “Prosecutor of
the Year” by the
“Tear up all those offers for a credit card,”
he said. “Invest in a shredder.”
Home repair scams are
another “big deal with the elderly,” he added.
“A guy pulls up to your door and says he just
finished a driveway down the street and has some concrete left. He offers to do your driveway for a quarter
of the cost. You think this is an
opportunity to get a good deal, but instead of putting down three inches of
concrete, he will make the driveway half an inch thick. It looks nice, but when next winter comes, it
will bust up.
“It’s always the same
story. They put on a time pressure. It has to be done now. People will pay four or five times what they
should pay for a new roof because they were pressured into it. It doesn’t cost anything to say no! These people are experts at trying to make you
feel bad about saying ‘no.’”
His office is looking
at drug prices, Morrison related, “looking to see if pharmaceuticals are
over-priced. Some companies are
inflating their prices tremendously, especially for Medicaid. That’s one of the things we have our eye on
now.”
The Medicaid Fraud and
Abuse Unit of Morrison’s office investigates and prosecutes fraud committed by
providers in the Medicaid program. On
March 29, Morrison announced the convictions of a
“Sometimes institutions
abuse the system and overcharge,” he said.
“There are always those out there who will take advantage of a
situation.”
Morrison built the
Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation Unit within the Criminal Justice Division of
his office. The unit -- cooperating with
Social and Rehabilitation Services, the Kansas Department of Aging, and the
Kansas Department of Health and Environment -- monitors reports of physical and
financial abuse of seniors and prosecutes abusers.
“We also are doing what
we can to stand up for Kansas consumers,” said Morrison, District Attorney in
Johnson County from 1989 until his election as the 42nd attorney general of the
State of Kansas.
“The day after 9/11, we had some gas
stations whose prices went from $1.28 to $4.50 in one day. I went on the radio and said we were going to
file charges, and all the station owners were fined. We’ve never had that problem again.”