Jeffrey Maas thought he was being a good citizen, helping to fix a mistake that he was told was going to ruin someone’s career. His naivete led him into a common scam that cost him most of his life savings.
Maas, a 76-year-old retiree living in New Jersey, read the e-mail that millions of people have received: “Thank you for your order of Norton anti-virus software … for $691.85…If you would like to confirm or cancel this subscription, please call…”
Unfortunately, Maas did call to cancel the subscription he never ordered – and got sucked into a scheme that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was not alone: the FBI estimates that the “phantom hacker/courier scheme costs Americans — most of them senior citizens — more than $500 million annually. And sadly, that estimate is probably woefully understated, because most people are too embarrassed to admit they have been taken, and never report it to authorities.
Jeffrey Maas is one of the very few victims willing to publicly admit they were taken. And he is trying to help keep others from falling for such schemes: He identified one of the (low-level) scammers who was arrested and indicted. Maas has filed a civil lawsuit, not just against the conmen but against a major regional bank and a precious-metals-coin dealer who helped enable it.
Scams targeting senior citizens take many forms.
There are Medicare scams that get seniors to turn over personal information in exchange for “free” or unneeded medical equipment.
There are “grandparent” schemes that use texts or cloned voices supposedly from grandchildren who are in trouble and need bail money wired immediately; lottery scams that require the “winner” to first transfer taxes or fees prior to getting their prize; romance scams where fraudsters build fake relationships — often just online — over weeks or months, and then request money for emergencies, travel, or medical bills; and IRS impersonation scams where “agents” threaten arrest for unpaid taxes unless immediate payment is made via gift cards or wire transfer.
While the scams take many forms and have numerous variations, there are some common denominators. They target older adults who are less tech-savvy, perhaps more trusting, more gullible, but certainly more likely to fall for the scam — and lose more money — than their younger counterparts. The AARP reports that people in their 70s reported a median loss of $1,000 per fraud incident, compared to a median of $417 for those in their 20s. Those in their 70s also reported losing a median of $20,000 to investment scams, versus $1,551 for victims in their 20s. Sadly, the FBI estimates that Americans lost $4.9 billion to scams in 2024, up 43% from the year earlier.
Exactly why the problem is getting worse is unclear. Perhaps the scammers are becoming more sophisticated; or there are just more of them. Another reason may be that companies which are supposed to have processes in place to help protect the elderly either do not or are simply not following them.
That’s what happened to Maas. After being convinced by the scammers that his bank account had been erroneously credited with several hundred thousand dollars — and the “proof” was eerily credible — they then convinced him that the only way he could return the money without causing the person who made the error to lose his job was to deliver gold coins to a certified messenger.
In retrospect, this “solution” was obviously preposterous, and Maas realized that just as he handed over a second tranche of coins — and then snapped a photo of the courier’s license plate. But in the moment, it seemed reasonable, and Maas was conned.
There were multiple checkpoints throughout the con where others could have intervened but didn’t. Maas had been instructed to go to his local bank and wire money to one of several precious-metal-coin companies recommended by the scammers. At the bank, Maas told the banker he wanted to wire nearly his entire life savings to the coin company — and all the while was on an open phone call with the scammer. The banker did not ask a single question of this obviously distressed, elderly man, such as, “Why are you doing this? Did you get financial advice? Who is on the phone?”
Similarly, the coin company owner never asked him a single question. And here too, Maas was on an open phone call with the scammer. But perhaps most remarkably, this whole scheme happened twice — two days in a row — because the scammers knew they had a live fish on the line. And no one who could have stopped it — or even slowed it down — was doing anything. They were just treating it as business-as-usual.
Banks — and to a smaller extent coin companies — have a responsibility to know their customers and take precautions to prevent what is known in their industries as elder financial exploitation. There are federal regulations — about staff training and procedures — and specific red flags that employees are supposed to be on the lookout for. One is whether the elderly customer is taking directions from someone with whom they are speaking on a cellphone. In addition to the federal regulations, there are New Jersey statutes designed to help protect seniors. None of them were followed.
A judge and jury will determine whether the bank and coin company were negligent in Maas’ case. And a different jury will determine if the courier or anyone else was criminally liable. Until then, we need to get banks and coin companies to stop being complacent and helping to enable these scams. They need to slow down these transactions — even by a few minutes — and ask a few questions. Such delays won’t hobble the economy, and they might help save other seniors from the financial and emotional harms Maas has suffered. Criminals may be driving these scams, but lazy companies willing to look the other way are making them possible.
Steve Cohen is an attorney at Pollock Cohen LLP.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
