As seasons are altering, scammers are altering with them — as police launch one other set of warning indicators for aged residents particularly to be careful for.
“Spring brings the increased solicitation by international travelers offering residents home improvement work,” Boston Police mentioned in a current group alert. “In past years, Boston residents have paid tens of thousands of dollars for masonry, driveway, paving, chimney, basement, roofing and fence repair; only to be left with worse damage or little to no improvement.”
The “Paving Contractor” or “Home Improvement” scams could seem like door-to-door solicitation for constructing work with basic warning indicators — providing unrealistic reductions, placing stress on patrons and asking for checks to people as a substitute of firms. The scams escalate from $1,500 paving or masonry restore to tens of hundreds of {dollars} of “foundational damage,” the BPD discover mentioned.
These scams are simply a few of many that may hit aged residents significantly laborious — listed with telemarketing, Medicare and medical insurance fraud on the National Council on Aging website.
Scammers could name older adults pretending to be a grandchild in bother to get cash, or ship out hyperlinks by way of textual content or electronic mail to gather and promote folks’s information or pose as authorities or different officers in makes an attempt to stress folks out of their private info.
“I really think we need to make sure we’re raising awareness and making sure that that our older residents are being careful of releasing their personal information,” mentioned Emily Shea, Commissioner of the Age Strong Commission of Boston. “Not everybody has what’s best at heart.”
The Age Strong Commission releases info on completely different reported scams impacting older adults in Seniority Magazine all year long, Shea mentioned, becoming a member of nationwide rip-off consciousness instruments like AARP’s Fraud Watch Network and the Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker.
With the wide selection of scams, safety in opposition to them will be tough. Tip-offs to the most recent “Home Improvement” scams within the Boston space could embody door-to-door solicitation or slick flyers with uninspired enterprise names, reductions due to “left over materials” from neighborhood jobs and threatening or intimidating demeanor after preliminary work, the police listed.
“Don’t give out your personal information — that is a big one — to somebody unless it’s somebody you trust,” Shea suggested on be careful for scams usually. “We ask that people not release personal information, hang up the phone, ask for help, if something is too good to be true.”
If somebody is focused by a rip-off, sources advise, any info on the operation ought to be reported to the police or Attorney General’s workplace.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”