Our Fraud Problem

James Toomey (Harvard University), Our Fraud Problem (2021):

We think of frauds and scams as primarily a problem for older adults. In the past few years, states and the federal government have passed a range of statutes designed to prevent seniors, as distinct from other adults, from scams—from more harshly punishing scams directed towards older adults to authorizing financial institutions to more closely monitor and rapidly freeze the accounts of older clients. This successful, popular, and bipartisan law reform movement has taken place without a thorough empirical understanding of whether in fact seniors are scammed more frequently than other age groups.