Nursing Homes and Senior Living

Grandparent scams are back in the news. On Tuesday, acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Brennan announced that two Tampa, Florida, men have been sentenced for targeting elderly consumers in northern Ohio. Officials say the men fleeced victims for a total of $383,932.

Like most other grandparent scams, this one had a cash component. Officials say the defendants would allegedly call senior citizens and pretend to be a relative or an attorney for a relative and claim that the family member had been arrested and needed money for bail.

Once the victim took the bait, officials said the scammers would arrange to collect the money through a purported “courier.” Of course, that person was just one of the perpetrators of the scam.

The scam that won’t go away

The grandparent scam isn’t easy to squash, particularly because it pulls on the heartstrings of someone who wants to come to the rescue of a family member. In a late 2019 report to Congress, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it received 256,404 fraud complaints in 2018 from consumers who were at least 60 years old, accounting for nearly $400 million in losses.

The “bail money” version isn’t anything new, but there are always creative crooks who think they’ve found a new angle -- like COVID-19 -- that might fly under the radar.

Scammers are now turning to social media to fuel their schemes because there are countless people who bare their souls on platforms like Facebook. Fraudsters take all that information and then use it to build a scenario the victim might fall for.

Many people never take the time to review what kind of identity information they’re leaving open for others to glean on social media. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t put those settings out in front like it does with “About,” “Friends,” and “Add to Story,” but if you add “/settings” to the Facebook URL so that it reads “https://www.facebook.com/settings,” you’ll find everything you’re allowing others to access and view. Take a good look at that and ask yourself why anyone really needs that information, then turn it on or off.

If you want something simpler, the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggests using a one-click privacy setting to retroactively change all your past posts to be visible to your friends only. 

Know someone 60 or over or someone who’s been scammed?

If anyone knows someone aged 60 or older, make sure they know about the grandparent scheme. It might just help them avoid becoming a victim down the line.

If you know someone who has been a victim of financial fraud, help is standing by at the National Elder Fraud Hotline. You can reach it by dialing 1-833-FRAUD-11 (1-833-372-8311).

Reporting a scam can help authorities identify those who commit fraud, and reporting certain financial losses due to fraud as soon as possible can increase the likelihood of recovering losses. The fraud hotline is staffed seven days a week from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. (EST). 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota has filed charges against 60 defendants, charging them with operating a nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme that targeted elderly consumers.

Authorities say the alleged scam revolved around magazine sales and netted the operators an estimated $300 million. The defendants were indicted on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and violating the Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams Act of 1994 (the “SCAMS Act”). 

“This case represents the largest elder fraud scheme in the nation,” said U.S. Attorney Erika MacDonald. “More than 150,000 elderly and vulnerable victims across the United States have been identified in what is essentially a criminal class action.” 

The FBI and other regional law enforcement agencies took part in the investigation. FBI Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge Michael Paul said the operation consisted of using telemarketers to pitch magazine subscriptions over a 20-year period.

Magazine sales

According to court documents, the defendants “devised and carried out a telemarketing scheme” to defraud more than 150,000 victim-consumers through fraudulent magazine sales companies.

The companies operated telemarketing call centers from which their employees allegedly made calls using deceptive sales scripts designed to defraud victim consumers by inducing them -- “through a series of lies and misrepresentations” -- into making large or repeat payments to the companies.

The indictments further allege that the defendants used a variety of fraudulent and misleading sales scripts in their operation. The telemarketers are accused of falsely claiming to be calling from the victim’s existing magazine subscription company about an existing magazine subscription package. 

Claimed they could reduce costs

The indictments claim the telemarketers often claimed to be able to reduce the monthly cost of an existing subscription. In reality, the U.S. Attorney’s Office says the company had no existing relationship with the victim and was actually fraudulently signing the victim up for expensive and entirely new magazine subscriptions.

The government says the effect was that a single consumer went from having one magazine subscription to, at times, more than a dozen, all with different fraudulent magazine companies, each “sold” under the auspices of “reducing” the consumer’s monthly rate.

“Unfortunately, we live in a world where fraudsters are willing to take advantage of seniors, who are often trusting and polite,” said MacDonald. “It’s my hope that this prosecution is a call for vigilance and caution.”

Illinois is considering legislation to mandate and enforce minimum staffing requirements at nursing homes operating within the state.

The measure, the Nursing Home Residents' Quality of Care Initiative (SB 1510, SA #1), is the state’s latest response to complaints about the care elderly residents are receiving. It’s not a new issue. In 2016, the governor of Illinois signed a law allowing families to install electronic monitoring systems in residents' rooms.

At the time, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported receiving approximately 19,000 complaints of abuse and neglect by long-term care facilities each year. The sponsors of the proposed law say the situation hasn’t improved.

"It has been both heartbreaking and motivating to me, through my work, to see how devastating it can be for an entire family when a loved one receives inadequate care in a nursing home," said Illinois State Sen. Jacqueline Collins, sponsor of the legislation.

Strict enforcement

Collins’ bill calls for strict enforcement of the state’s minimum staffing requirements, heightened  public transparency of nursing home violations, and enhanced safeguards regarding psychotropic medications and a resident's right to informed consent.

"This initiative sets forth some much- needed measures to ensure that no family has to see their loved one suffer unnecessarily in a place where they are supposed to be cared for," Collins said.

In 2015, 39 percent of Illinois nursing homes received a low-quality rating from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. An AARP survey taken this year found 84 percent of Illinois voters supported legislation increasing the quality of nursing home care.

"Residents of nursing homes are some of Illinois’ most frail whose care needs have unfortunately adjusted their life's path to need skilled nursing care 24 hours a day," said Ryan Gruenenfelder, director of Advocacy and Outreach for AARP Illinois. "Residents and their caregivers need to be able to trust nursing homes at a time when they are more vulnerable than they have ever been."

Public vs. private

A study last year by the University of Illinois at Chicago found differences in the care residents receive at publicly supported nursing homes and those in the for-profit category. The researchers found that residents of for-profit nursing homes were twice as likely to experience clinical signs of neglect compared with those in not-for-profit residencies.

“Those signs of neglect included severe dehydration in clients with feeding tubes which should have been managed, clients with stage three and four bed sores, broken catheters and feeding tubes, and clients whose medication for chronic conditions was not being managed properly,” according to the researchers.

While Illinois has had its well-publicized issues with nursing homes, it may well be a national problem. In 2017, the state of Maryland sued a company operating five nursing homes within the state. Regulators claimed that about 1,000 residents were discharged into inadequate care so their places could be taken with higher-paying residents on Medicaid.