LONDON–While cryptocurrency is largely perceived as the domain of younger people, a new report has found elderly individuals are increasingly being victimized in crypto-related fraud.
“Similar to many scams, elderly individuals find themselves to be targeted the most - however, with the average elderly individual lacking in knowledge about crypto, these scams pose a much higher threat,” stated BanklessTimes.com, which said it has conducted an investigation of the severity and volume of crypto scams among the elderly.
Key Findings
Among the key findings, according to BanklessTimes.com:
- American senior citizens lost over $1 billion dollars to crypto scams in 2022 - a 78% increase since the previous year
- There has been a fourfold increase in crypto crime over the past 12 months
- The most common cryptocurrency crime in 2022 was investment-related, which in the U.S. 3,292 people were victims to causing a combined loss of $716,466,087.
Red Flags
There are five red flags financial institutions should be watching for when it comes to indicators of crypto fraud among the elderly, according to the company. Those include if an elderly individual:
- Opens an account at a crypto asset exchange, despite demonstrating minimal or no knowledge of cryptocurrency
- Begins making numerous transfers to an associated crypto wallet for no clear reason
- Starts using their debit or credit card to make frequent and/or high value purchases of crypt assets
- Funds their purchase of crypto assets with substantial savings from a retirement account
- Starts making large cash withdrawals from their bank account and indicates that they intend to deposit the funds at a Bitcoin ATM
- Starts trading crypto assets in inexplicably large amounts that appear to be beyond caregiver’s own means.
The full report can be found here.
You Can Now Get CUToday.info’s Daily News Headlines in Your Mailbox at the Low, Low Price of Free
Are you missing out on the latest news in credit unions? Missing the trends and developments you need to be aware of? We can help. Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily Fresh Today news update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more.
And it’s free!
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?
Please note and/or make your IT department or email administrator aware the emails will be coming from the domains CUTodayinfo.com and CUTodayinfoReply.com.