In The Age of Fraud, James Toomey challenges a heretofore unchallenged assumption: that elderly persons are more vulnerable to scammers than younger adults. We all unthinkingly assume that the elderly are riper for fraud victimhood. In fact, Toomey’s empirical research reveals, young adults are more often the targets of fraud than older adults. Younger adults are also more susceptible to engaging with and ultimately falling victim to fraud. Perhaps all of our assumptions concerning older adult fraud victims were just a bit of ageism. Older folks, it turns out, do a pretty good job protecting themselves from scammers.
Toomey’s study polled two cohorts: one age 65 and older and another age 25 to 35. Toomey notes: “We tend to think of scams and frauds as primarily a problem for older adults—lonely, trusting, and possibly experiencing cognitive decline.” (P. 2.) We also take for granted that the elderly are more attractive targets to scammers since they may be more affluent. Toomey debunks both assumptions and outlines important policy considerations which necessarily follow.
Over the past decade or so, legal reforms on several fronts have singled out fraud against senior citizens as a distinct problem. Elderly fraud victims have been treated as a discrete problem, and concern for them has generated distinct legal responses, such as the SEC’s 2018 safe harbor for reporting suspected fraud targeting older account holders with its Rule 2165. Congress debated the Protecting Seniors from Emergency Scams Act. Numerous state law initiatives have also been implemented, typically imposing stiffer penalties when the scam victim is an older adult (or an individual with a disability). Some jurisdictions have allocated more funding to contend with older adult scam victimization.
All these reforms rest upon the supposition that older Americans are more susceptible to scams than others – that senior scams “represent a discrete social problem” requiring “a discrete legal solution.” (P. 10.) Many reformers claim we still have not gone far enough. But in fact, the claim that seniors are more likely to be financially victimized is wrong. When actual evidence is considered, the qualitative assertion underlying various legislative responses is simply unsupported.
Disrupting conventional wisdom on important matters is what good empirical scholarship does best. Toomey’s study, focusing primarily on COVID-19-related scams with a sampling of some six hundred Americans, is not necessarily conclusive. (He suggests that the public focus on senior scams may have worked to achieve its aim and put the elderly more on guard against scammers.) However, it does strongly suggest that to the extent the criminalization of fraud against older Americans was premised on their enhanced targeting by fraudsters and heightened vulnerabilities of older targets, those assumptions are wrong. And here is where Toomey’s article really gets interesting.
He posits: “It might be that taking advantage of older adults is qualitatively worse as an ethical matter.” (P. 4.) It might be that targeting a senior is morally worse than targeting a young adult. Could the legal reforms be justified on the grounds that targeting senior fraud victims is more morally offensive–qualitatively? This is the justification underpinning hate crimes; not that hate crimes are more common than other crimes but that their moral blameworthiness simply exceeds that of other crimes (a deontological claim which cannot be empirically disproven). It’s worse to victimize an older person because it is more despicable. It’s worse because it is worse. As a result, it demands a greater retributive sanction against the perpetrator.
Alternatively, it could be that some crimes are more blameworthy because they are more harmful (a consequentialist claim which might be susceptible to proof). How could the motivation behind a particular crime (say to target a senior citizen rather than a younger adult) result in more harmful consequences? Theoretically, retirees would have a harder time rebuilding their nest egg from the devastating effects of a successful scam than working-age folks. Retirees might also suffer greater emotional distress as a consequence of being targeted by scammers than younger adults. Older Americans might be too trusting – less resilient, more fragile. And therefore, they might suffer more emotional and financial harm than younger victims.
These stereotypes, however, seem to be leading us right back to the problem of ageism which assumed older victims were more vulnerable than was actually the case. Toomey does not call for a dismantling of the legal reforms associated with financial abuse targeting older individuals. But he does call for a reassessment.
