{"id":7685,"date":"2017-12-08T18:12:04","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T18:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=7685"},"modified":"2017-12-08T18:12:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T18:12:25","slug":"toolkit-helps-caregivers-protect-seniors-money-from-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=7685","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Toolkit\u2019 Helps Caregivers Protect Seniors\u2019 Money from Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Con<\/a>

Con artists often seek out seniors during the holiday season with scams demanding they pay bogus tax bills, false pleas from \u201crelatives\u201d for money or other deceptive schemes. Photo: Demitirov\/GettyImages<\/p><\/div>\n

by Mark Richardson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas \u2014<\/strong>\u00a0Family celebrations during the holiday season often center around parents and grandparents. But the holidays are a time when con artists may also have have seniors in their sights.<\/p>\n

Family members who act as financial caregivers for parents or others often are the first line of defense against scammers. And AARP Texas and Texas Appleseed are helping them with an online toolkit called Managing Someone Else\u2019s Money in Texas.<\/p>\n

Tim Morstad, associate state director for AARP Texas, said seniors can be vulnerable to unscrupulous people looking to swindle them out of their life\u2019s savings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat takes a lifetime to build up, that nest egg, can disappear in a matter of seconds or minutes,\u201d Morstad said. \u201cThere are scammers out there that are looking to take advantage of people. It\u2019s very important that people learn how to protect themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

AARP\u2019s Fraud Watch Network warned that scammers most often target adults 50 and over, and can approach a potential victim over the phone, on the internet or, sometimes, by knocking on the front door. One recent study estimated that financial fraud costs American seniors more than $3 billion a year.<\/p>\n

Morstad said AARP\u2019s online toolkit was designed to help the state\u2019s 50,000 financial caregivers find the best way to protect their loved ones\u2019 assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s over 50,000 guardianships in the state of Texas,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd many people who don\u2019t have the resources to hire a lawyer search online to try to find quality information, and there frankly isn\u2019t much out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morstad added that another layer of protection, a new Texas law backed by AARP, went into effect in September, allowing banks and other financial institutions to act when they see a transaction that doesn\u2019t seem right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis law will now allow them to put a hold \u2013 a temporary hold \u2013 on a suspicious transaction so it can be investigated to make sure that that money doesn\u2019t fly out the door to some scammer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The financial toolkit is available online \u2013 in both English and Spanish \u2013 at\u00a0ProtectTheirMoneyTX.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Family celebrations during the holiday season often center around parents and grandparents. But the holidays are a time when con artists may also have have seniors in their sights. Family members who act as financial caregivers for parents or others often are the first line of defense against scammers. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7686,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions\/7686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}