From USA Today — By Madeline Mitchell —
It’s the kind of call that makes Clayton LiaBratten’s blood boil.
LiaBraaten, senior executive spokesperson at Truecaller, a Caller ID and spam blocking app, said a man called in recently asking for help. His mother, a grieving widow, had been scammed out of more than $7,000. Elder fraud scammers told her they’d worked with her late husband to cover up tax evasion records, and in order to preserve what was left of her inheritance, she had to pay up.
By the time her adult son found out about the scam, it was too late.
Using artificial intelligence, scammers are “scouring obituaries and looking for vulnerabilities,” LiaBratten said. “It’s so disgusting, I can barely keep my cool about it.”
LiaBraaten couldn’t help the family recover any of the money they’d lost. But he said the family was able to seal off the widow’s bank accounts, and now any time she moves money one of her adult children has to approve it.
More adult children are becoming liaisons between their parents and their parents’ bank accounts as AI makes fraud harder to spot.
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