Scams are getting more convincing day and day, targeting individuals 60 and older, with particularly severe impacts on monolingual Chinese seniors in the Bay Area.

In 2023, victims aged 60 and above nationwide lost a staggering $3.4 billion to more than two dozen types of scams, according to the FBI, up from $3.1 billion in 2022. This increase encompasses over 101,000 reports filed by victims, a 14% rise from the previous year.

California tops all states in terms of elder fraud, both in the amount of money lost and the number of victims, with losses exceeding $620 million across more than 11,000 reports filed in 2023. As these scams continue to proliferate, Chinese elders in the Bay Area are especially at risk, potentially jeopardizing their independence and quality of life.

In a media briefing on June 6, hosted by Ethnic Media Services, a panel of experts in elder abuse prevention discussed the reasons behind the rise in scams, shared real-life victim stories, and offered advice on how to prevent fraud.

Speakers

  • Robert K. Tripp, Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco Field Office, FBI 
  • Tony Flores, Sergeant-Inspector, Special Victims Unit, SF Police Department 
  • Ali Chiu, Elder Abuse Prevention Program, Institute on Aging 
  • Jaynry Mak, attorney representing victims of $39 million scam targeting Chinatown residents 
  • Anni Chung, President and CEO, Self Help for the Elderly 

The Classic Scams

According to FBI data, the typical elder fraud victim loses over $33,000.

Investment scams are among the most prevalent forms of elder fraud, noted Robert Tripp. He doesn’t “mean subtle corporate fraud, but high-risk, guaranteed-reward … It could start with an unsolicited email, call or text with an opportunity to get rich investing in lucrative opportunities like cryptocurrency.”

In addition to tech support and romance scams, another significant form is impersonation scams. Tripp explained, “where people pretend to be a government official, either a U.S. official or a consular official from the People’s Republic of China, indicating that the person getting the call has to pay money.”

Tripp highlighted two key red flags to be aware of: unsolicited calls or messages requesting money, and a sense of urgency to pay immediately. “If you don’t understand why you’re being asked to do something, don’t feel pressured to say yes,” he advised.

These scammers often build trust by speaking the victim’s language, typically operating in teams of two or three, “and may be working off a debt to an organization due to gambling or borrowing money,” said Tony Flores.

Flores also stressed the importance of not delaying in reporting a potential scam. “Reporting delays are dangerous,” he said. “We may lose information, surveillance resources, forensic evidence … if we can present a case to the U.S. attorney’s office, it’s not going to happen tomorrow. It’ll happen four to five years later. And they target the elderly because they’re banking that that person will not be around for a testimony by then.”

In San Francisco, over 42% of substantiated elder abuse victims are Asian American. Despite the AAPI community making up a third of the city’s population, reporting from this community is only 12%, meaning that only a third of the victims filed reports.

“We’re already very concerned that these financial scams are increasing,” she added. With the advent of AI deepfakes coming to our seniors with content that looks and sounds just like relatives, which is even more scary.

Those who believe they’ve fallen victim to a scam should “first contact their financial institution, then law enforcement—call the FBI at 1-800-CALLFBI or file a report online at the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center,” Tripp advised, noting that Chinese translators are available by phone.

Fighting Shame

In addition to shame, other barriers to reporting scams include fear of retaliation and limited access to resources in the victim’s language, said Ali Chiu. “What I worry about most is isolation, both for lack of in-language resources, and self-isolation from people who could help.”

A 72-year-old monolingual Chinese woman only reached out to the Institute on Aging “because we were on TV and I spoke her language,” Chiu continued, referring to a Channel 26 broadcast. “This woman was rich, got a phone call about an investment scam. She’d ignore it and they kept calling, making threats. She went to the bank to withdraw money when they said they were tracking her phone … She eventually put her house on a lien with over 15% interest.”

“She didn’t want to tell anybody about it because she was so ashamed,” Chiu said.

Victims are often reluctant to report scams because the perpetrators may be trusted individuals. A notable case is that of Derek Vincent Chu, an East Bay man indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2023 for operating a Ponzi scheme involving at least $39 million and over 100 victims, many from San Francisco’s Chinatown.

From 2013 to 2020, Chu used several companies to raise the $39 million by fraudulently soliciting investments, using newer funds to pay off earlier investors and spending over $7.3 million on personal expenses, including travel and luxury items, said Jaynry Mak.

Power of Storytelling

“I first knew of this case when a Chinatown merchant who grew up knowing this man told me she’d lent him money and he never paid her back,” said Mak. Months later, another senior woman told Mak that she had known Chu, her life insurance broker, for over 30 years, and that he had taken her money.

In 2016, this woman and her husband, who had saved money for retirement after working as garment workers, were approached by Chu and his father, who asked to borrow $5,000 to be paid back with 15% interest, which was paid in full. By mid-2017, the Chus asked the senior couple for additional loans of $230,000, $50,000, and another $50,000.

By January 2018, the Chus requested the couple sign a document to protect their investments. The husband was very ill, “on his deathbed,” Mak explained, and as monolingual Chinese speakers, they couldn’t read the document. Trusting Chu, they signed it under power of attorney.

They later discovered they had signed a loan on their property for $800,000, which Chu received. To refinance the property, as they couldn’t make payments, the Chus took out $1.2 million, increasing the mortgage to over $2 million, in addition to the original loan.

The Chus then convinced the couple to sell the property as they were unable to repay the loans.

When Mak realized this case was connected to the earlier merchant’s case, she filed a report with the SFPD, found similar reports from other victims, approached the District Attorney, and filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court in 2019.

After the indictment made the news, many other victims reached out to Mak, including a monolingual senior in Chinatown who had lost tens of thousands of dollars in a cryptocurrency scam.

“Many times, the headlines talk about victims, and it really is a very sad story,” Mak said. “But by reporting, they stopped other victims from being victims, stopped this scammer from getting more money, and there’s a lot of power in those stories.”