Published June 15, 2022 at 1:42 pm
Durham Regional Police say residents should “phone a friend” to talk to the seniors they love about a ongoing rash of scams targeting the Region’s elderly.
DRPS has long warned residents of so-called grandparent scams. These confidence schemes target the elderly across Canada and have defrauded Durham residents of tens of thousands of dollars in just the last year.
In effort to prevent these scams DRPS is encouraging a “phone a friend” campaign to get people to warn their relatives of such schemes and open the channel for them to report suspicious call and visits.
The police are especially appealing to social media users to reach out to loved ones who do not use site like Facebook or Twitter to ensure they too are aware of the campaign.
The goal of the Phone a Friend initiative is to make sure potential fraud victims, particularly seniors, reach out and report any fraud attempts when they feel unsure of intimidated.
Police say such scams, especially those targeting seniors are on the rise of late. Generally older people are targets because they are home during the day, the have the money fraudsters are after, and they are more likely to trust authority figures.
There are several methods these fraudsters use to exploit seniors in the community. Often the conman will call pretending to be a debt collection agent. In these kinds of scams the criminal often…
