“Offenders knew that there was this prime vulnerable target all living together right here in this small area, and they were preying upon those residents there,” she surmises.
The FSU researchers believe that fraud criminals targeting older people is likely a problem in retirement communities around the country. They’re testing that hypothesis in a joint study with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, surveying residents in California’s Contra Costa County (home to a variety of communities for older adults) and across Florida.
The goal is to determine whether, as Brancale puts it, “these older adults are living in hot spots for fraud.”
Logic suggests that they are, says Frank McKenna, chief innovation officer for Point Predictive, a San Diego-based fraud-prevention company. The international crime rings perpetrating some of today’s biggest frauds can target victims using information readily available online, he notes. Why wouldn’t they hone in on retirement communities?
“[Residents there generally have] a lot of money…and are perceived to be more easily manipulated,” says McKenna. “That’s their demographic. They would definitely target people in that area.”
Looking beyond The Villages
One of the first retirement communities in the country sprang up in Seal Beach, California, in the 1960s as Leisure World, a gated enclave for people 55-plus south of Los Angeles that now has more than 9,500 residents. They include Nathan Steele, 73, a member of the Seal Beach city council. While discussing the scams in his community with AARP recently, he noted that he’d just lost money to a scam that very morning. A colleague had sent him an email about a political conference coming up that weekend, and asked if Steele could help the group by paying a bill related to the event. Steele sent the $490 payment through Zelle, before later learning that a scammer had hacked the colleague’s email to perpetrate this sophisticated “do-me-a-favor” scam. “We’re a vulnerable population, there’s no question about it,” Steele says.
There doesn’t appear to be much disagreement on that point. But the FSU researchers hope to determine whether people like Steele are being targeted even more frequently than the average older person because they live in communities with a high density of residents 55 and older. This might be the case, in theory, if criminals search for potential victims by ZIP code or community type, which would be simple to do.
John McCarthy, the state’s attorney for Maryland’s Montgomery County, prosecuted six couriers for overseas criminals who impersonated federal agents and convinced seven older county residents that they were victims of identity theft or their bank accounts had been compromised. Victims were told to convert their cash to gold bars, which they were to hand over to a courier for safekeeping. He says there’s no way to know whether the perpetrators targeted the victims based on their residential areas, but three of the seven victims lived in retirement communities, including a resident of Leisure World in Silver Spring, Maryland, who had nearly $800,000 stolen in the scam.
“The older generation is polite,” McCarthy says. “They’re kind and will engage with people on the phone.” So he tries to teach them to be more wary: “Don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the number,” he says. “The IRS doesn’t call you on the phone; the FBI doesn’t call you on the phone. … Scammers call you on the phone.”
Tip of the Iceberg
Older Americans reported nearly $4.9 billion stolen through fraud in 2024, with an average loss of $83,000, according to the latest annual report from the FBI. That’s a stunning 43 percent more than 2023’s reported losses. Adults 60 and older submitted more than 147,000 complaints.
These are massive numbers. And yet the actual losses are likely far higher than the official numbers indicate, because many victims don’t report their losses. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission estimated in a 2025 report to Congress that, when accounting for underreporting, fraud criminals stole as much as $195.9 billion from Americans in 2024 alone.
The ‘locusts’ — and the sleuths
Seniors vs Crime is a unique fraud-fighting group with a strong presence in The Villages. It was started by the state attorney general’s office in 1989 and now has 31 offices across Florida, focused on educating older people about scams and assisting fraud victims. The police or FBI generally handle the criminal cases that often originate overseas and can result in victims losing their life savings, and then some — the romance scams, lottery scams, grandparent scams.
The Seniors vs Crime “sleuths,” as the volunteers are called, often handle complaints about in-person scammers who roam the region — contractors who promise to install a pool or do landscaping, then disappear with the money after doing only partial or shoddy work, or no work at all.
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