Snail Mail

Most of the mail that lands in the box on my porch these days I don’t want to open, much less read. Increasingly, my so-called snail mail has nothing personal about it.

Worse than that, many of the mailings are what my daughter and members of her generation would call “sketchy.” I strongly suspect they come from people out to get me.

Among the solicitations I receive, two types figure prominently. First, are those for a so-called “extended vehicle warranty.” One such notice claims that the warranty on my car may have expired or is about to expire. For me to remedy the situation, they have already given me a customer ID, 307195853.

Would you trust people whose return address is “Warranty Activation Headquarters?” Of course, they know me well enough to call me by my first name and to presume knowledge of my car purchasing history.

This warranty scam has prompted the Toyota company to send out a disclaimer to its customers, among whom am I. They call part of their warning “Phishing Alert,” using a term previously unknown to me.

To Toyota, “phishing is a scam that uses spam, phone calls, emails or ‘enticing’ mail pieces to deceive consumers, businesses or associates into disclosing user ids, credit card numbers, bank information, social security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive personal information.”

In a “Fraud Alert,” the company also warns about checks that purport to come from Toyota. Such checks, though fraudulent, can disclose important information to the criminals when anyone attempts to cash them.

A second category of unwanted and untrustworthy mail comes my way from people selling reverse mortgages. One such mailing features a heading in large capital letters “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.”

This solicitation also provides me with an ID number ready for doing business. Among the benefits envisioned by this company are my “dream vacation” and coverage of all non-insured medical bills.

Mind you, I am not here badmouthing reverse mortgages in themselves. For some people in certain situations they can be useful for financing the expenses of later life. And the federal government requires people to receive financial counseling before agreeing to such arrangements.

Still, I deplore many of these pitches from people out to profit from older Americans. The offers they make stress the pluses of these deals without any indication of their disadvantages. Unwary people can be taken in by these hucksters, sometimes to their financial ruin.

Robert Blancato, a Washington D.C. based advocate, ranks as the national leader in organizing the fight against elder abuse. He calls one form of this  financial abuse of older people “the crime of the 21st century.”

In response, he has been leading an effort to persuade Congress to pass an “Elder Justice Act” that would offer greater protection against scam artists and other abusers.

Only one in every 25 cases of financial abuse ever gets reported to authorities. Those who are most vulnerable are women over age 75 who live alone. The latter include almost one-half of women that age.

Lisa Nerenberg, a social worker associated with Blancato, describes what she terms a “broad spectrum” of financial abuse of older people.

She lists various areas in which abusers operate. They include Social Security, credit cards, predatory lending, sweetheart scams, document misuse, among many others. Of course, in recent history telemarketing fraud and ID theft have become typical of new methods of stealing from people.

You would expect that people, once victimized, would not be trapped again. Not true, however: some victims become chronic and may become enrolled on a “sucker list” or a “mooch list” of repeats.

Evil as such abuses are, they seem less reprehensible than those financial abuses committed by family members or others known to the victims. A large percentage of these victims are people not able to take care of themselves.