Yes, young people can fall victim to scams
Yes, young people can fall victim to scams
We’re watching “Telemarketers” this month. The documentary series follows two former call center workers who discovered their employer was operating a huge scam. And the scam was even bigger than they could imagine. All three parts are available to stream on Max, with a subscription.
When we think about scams, there’s a tendency to think criminals primarily target older people. But scammers don’t care if their victims are young or old.
While research suggests that people can become more susceptible to fraud with age, that doesn’t mean younger generations are impervious to scams.
It boils down to the type of rip-off. Certain schemes affect young people more than older people. Investment or job scams harm younger people far more than older folks, said Emma Fletcher, senior data researcher at the Federal Trade Commission.
Marketplace’s David Brancaccio spoke with Fletcher about the misconceptions surrounding who gets scammed and who doesn’t. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: I’ve done a lot of work on this. Yes, older people are targeted by scammers, but, as you found, it is not mainly older people.
Emma Fletcher: No, the story is actually a lot more complicated. Younger people are reporting scams as well, and in fact, they’re more likely to report losing money to a scam than older people. But there are some other details that make the story actually quite interesting. Older people, when they do lose money, they tend to report much higher losses. But it also depends on the type of scam. So we see that certain scams affect younger people more, and certain scams affect older people more. And also the different ways of reaching people happen depending on whether they’re younger people or older people. So for example, younger people are more likely to be scammed on social media.
Brancaccio: It’s interesting. There are some researchers who think that although in some older people our ability to detect scams may decline, the antidote may be the wisdom of years.
Fletcher: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. We can’t discount the wisdom of years. A good example of that would be fake-check scams. Younger people are much more likely to lose money on a fake-check scam. And something tells me that older people probably have a lot more experience with checks and how they work.
Brancaccio: Yeah, another example of that would be, you know, when you’re 19 and you’re just starting out in life, you haven’t filed that many tax returns. You may not know that the Internal Revenue Service does not call you with an issue, does not telephone you with an issue. [A] person who’s filed taxes for 40, 50 years may be more aware of that.
Fletcher: That’s another great example. You know, if you’ve had the experience of being scammed once, you may be less likely to fail to recognize that scam the second time. And if you add on years, you’re more likely to have had those negative experiences that have taught you what a scam looks like, what to watch out for. But certainly older adults are being scammed. It’s just that younger adults are being scammed as well, and that’s a narrative that you don’t always hear. And in fact, on certain types of scams, you know, it’s really concerning how much younger adults appear to be being scammed. For example, on investment scams lately, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of people reporting that they were scammed on a cryptocurrency investment, where they thought they were investing cryptocurrency but really they were sending money to a scammer. And those are far, far more likely to be reported by younger consumers, about three times more likely than older consumers. Also things like job scams, seven times more likely to affect younger people than older individuals. Now, of course, that might also have something to do with, you know, the likelihood of looking for a job. You know, it might be more common among younger people. But that seven times number is just pretty staggering. And then for both older and younger consumers, scams involving online shopping purchases are No. 1. But younger people are far more likely to have had those negative experiences, where they ordered something, often after seeing an ad on social media, and then they just did not get what they ordered. We see that a lot. And it’s much more likely to be a young person.
Brancaccio: On the job scams, what’s that? You know, you can earn 500 bucks a week sitting at home and you respond to that and they take your money?
Fletcher: Sure, there’s some of that, but we also see job scams where people think they’ve been hired. And then they get a check in the mail and they deposit that check and they’re told to then send money somewhere, perhaps for equipment, perhaps if it’s sort of a gig job, like wrapping your car with advertising, they’ll be told that they’re sending money to the installer of the advertising. And they do that and then sometime later, the check bounces, and they’re on the hook for whatever money they sent. What many people don’t realize is that even when a bank tells you that the check has cleared and you see that money in your account, the bank is essentially fronting you the money and there’s still a possibility that it will turn out to be a fake, and then they will take that money back. So that is something that scammers exploit all the time. And it’s much more likely to affect younger people.
Brancaccio: I mean, what are ways that anyone, but we’re talking about younger people, can help protect themselves?
Fletcher: Well, you know, I think we’re all getting information about scams all the time. You know, people talk about scams more and more. There are, you know, different things on the news about scams. This story, for example. And people may shut out that information if they don’t think it really applies to them. So I think it’s really important for people to recognize that yes, a scam could happen to you, and this information is relevant to you. This is not information to just pass on to your grandmother. This is information that matters in your life. And you know, don’t assume that it can’t happen to you. That is going to create a risk when you think that this is something that just happens to older people or other people. Because, you know, the people that it happens to, they didn’t think it was going to happen to them either. And there’s too much, I think, of a tendency for people to think that they’re really not going to ever experience a scam. But if the timing is just right or just wrong, you could say, and it’s, you know, something that catches you at just that moment, it can really happen to anyone. And that’s what we see in our reporting data.
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