The cheaters win.

Sophisticated foreign criminals steal tens of billions of dollars from Americans every year, and the crime wave is expected to accentuate because the U.S. population ages and technologies like artificial intelligence make it easier than ever to commit fraud and get away with it.

Online and telephone scams have grown “exponentially,” overwhelming police and prosecutors who’re catching and convicting relatively few perpetrators, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network.

Victims rarely get their a reimbursement. This includes seniors who’ve lost their life savings in marriage scams, grandchild scams, tech support scams, and other common scams.

“We’re at a crisis level of fraud in society,” Stokes said. “So many people have joined the fight because it’s pretty easy to be a criminal. They don’t have to follow any rules. And you can make a lot of money, and then there’s very little chance of getting caught.”

A recent case from Ohio through which an 81-year-old man fell victim to a scammer and allegedly responded with violence illustrates the challenge law enforcement faces.

Police say a person fatally shot an Uber driver after wrongly assuming she was involved in a plot to swindle $12,000 in alleged bail money for a relative. The driver fell victim to the identical scammer, sent to a house halfway between Dayton and Columbus to select up a package for delivery, in response to authorities.

Homeowner William Brock has been charged with murder in connection with the fatal shooting at Lo-Letha Hall on March 25, however the conman who threatened Brock over the phone and set off the tragic chain of events stays at large greater than three months later.

Brock pleaded not guilty, claiming he feared for his life.

Scammers taking advantage

Internet and telephone crimes have turn into so common that law enforcement and adult protective services should not have enough resources to maintain up.

“It’s kind of like drinking from a fire hose,” said Brady Finta, a former FBI agent who oversaw investigations into elder fraud. “There’s so much of it, logistically and rationally, that it’s almost impossible to overcome now.”

Crimes may be difficult to analyze, especially those that originate overseas, where stolen funds are quickly converted into hard-to-trace cryptocurrency or transferred to offshore bank accounts.

Some police departments don’t take financial fraud as seriously as other crimes, which discourages and demoralizes victims, said Paul Greenwood, who has spent 22 years prosecuting seniors in San Diego.

“A lot of law enforcement thinks that because a victim is sending money voluntarily through gift cards or bank transfers or buying cryptocurrency, that it’s actually consensual,” said Greenwood, who travels the country teaching police tips on how to spot scams. “And that’s a big mistake, because it’s not. It’s not consensual. They’ve been scammed.”

Greenwood said federal prosecutors typically don’t intervene in a case until the fraud reaches a specific amount.

The U.S. Justice Department says it doesn’t impose a general monetary threshold for federal elder abuse prosecutions. But it acknowledged that a number of the 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country may set their very own thresholds, giving priority to cases with more victims or greater financial impact. Federal prosecutors bring tons of of elder fraud and abuse cases every year.

The Federal Trade Commission says the “vast majority” of scams go unreported. Often, victims are reluctant to come back forward.

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A 74-year-old woman who was recently charged with robbing a credit union north of Cincinnati was the victim of a web based scam, in response to her family. Authorities say they consider the lady was taken advantage of by the scammer, but there is no record that she filed a proper police report.

“These people are very good at what they do, and they are very good at scamming people and getting money out of them,” said Fairview Township, Ohio, police sergeant Brandon McCroskey, who investigated the robbery. “I’ve seen people almost want to fight with police and bank tellers because … they believe they have to get that money out.”

A destructive plan

Older people have more wealth as a gaggle and are a vulnerable goal for fraudsters. The effects may be devastating because lots of these victims are past their working years and don’t have much time to recoup their losses.

The variety of complaints about elder fraud filed with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center increased 14% last 12 months, while losses increased 11% to $3.4 billion, in response to a brand new report from the FBI.

Other estimates put the annual loss much higher.

A 2023 AARP study calculated that Americans over 60 lose $28.3 billion a 12 months to fraud. The Federal Trade Commission, attempting to account for unreported losses, estimated that fraudsters stole a staggering $137 billion in 2022, including $48 billion from seniors. The study’s authors acknowledged there is a “significant degree of uncertainty.”

In San Diego, William Bortz, 80, said criminals stole nearly $700,000 of his family’s savings in an elaborate scheme involving a nonexistent Amazon order, a fake “returns processing center” in Hong Kong, fake bank statements and directions that Bortz must “sync bank accounts” to get the a reimbursement.

Bortz’s scammer was relentless and harassed him, harassing him with dozens of phone calls, and at one point took control of his computer.

Even though he was the victim of a criminal offense, Bortz struggles with guilt.

“Now I understand why so many elder abuse scams never get reported. Because when you think about it, you think, ‘How could I have been so stupid?’” said Bortz, who retired after a profession in banking, financial services and real estate.

His daughter, Ave Williams, said local police and the FBI tried hard to trace down the foreign fraudster and get well the cash but bumped into dead ends. The family blames Bortz’s bank, which Williams says ignored multiple red flags and allowed her father to make several large transfers over an eight-day period. The bank has denied wrongdoing, and the family’s lawsuit against it has been dismissed.

“Fraudsters are getting better,” Williams said. “We need our law enforcement agencies to be given the tools they need, and we need our banks to get better because they are the first line of defense.”

The Justice Department believes the industry must do more and the United States is not going to discover a strategy to resolve the difficulty through the courts.

“Private industry — including technology, retail, banking, fintech and telecommunications — must make it harder for fraudsters to defraud victims and launder victims’ money,” the agency said in an announcement to The Associated Press.

The way forward

Banking industry officials told a Senate subcommittee in May that they were investing heavily in latest technologies to stem fraud, “and some of them are very promising.” The American Bankers Association says it is working on a program to coordinate real-time communications amongst banks to higher flag suspicious activity and curb the flow of stolen funds.

But industry officials said banks can’t prevent fraud on their very own. They said the U.S. needs an overarching national technique to combat fraud, calling the federal government’s current efforts scattershot and uncoordinated.

Law enforcement and industry need to affix forces to combat fraud faster and more effectively, said Finta, a former FBI agent who founded a nonprofit called the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center aimed toward strengthening cooperation between law enforcement and huge corporations equivalent to Walmart, Amazon and Google.

“There are very, very smart people and there are very powerful, wealthy companies that want this to stop,” he said. “So I think we have an opportunity to make a bigger impact and help our brothers and sisters in law enforcement who are struggling with this tsunami of fraud.”