Department of Health and Human Services
Administration on Aging

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The Administration on Aging (AoA) is dedicated to promoting consumer awareness, preventing elder victimization, and working to implement community partnerships to prevent Medicare and Medicaid fraud, error, and abuse. By informing and training senior volunteers, aging network personnel, and health care providers, AoA wants to make older Americans and their advocates better health care consumers.

Our efforts to keep seniors living in their own homes and participating fully in community life are undermined by financial exploitation and consumer fraud. We can encourage seniors to plan for their disability and make lifestyle changes that will delay or prevent it, but these efforts will not be fully realized for those seniors who lose their savings or their homes due to scams or financial exploitation. Fraud and financial exploitation are major threats to the well-being and independence of seniors. According to the National Elder Abuse Incidence Study, Adult Protective Services (APS) agencies substantiate more cases of financial abuse than physical abuse each year.

The mission of AoA's Anti Fraud and Abuse Team is to serve as the agency's focal point for coordinating, implementing, monitoring, expanding, evaluating, and promoting efforts to provide consumer information and protection designed to detect, prevent, and report error, fraud and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Please see our section under AoA Programs, SMP Program (Senior Medicare Patrol)

Financial institutions are often the first to recognize abuse, fraud, and exploitation against elderly and vulnerable adults, which is often perpetrated by a relative or trusted caregiver. The immediate, and often regular contact, financial institutions have with their older customers puts financial institutions in a unique position to report suspected fraud to APS for further investigation.

Recognizing this, the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging APS office used AoA funding to hire and train a financial exploitation investigator with experience in fraud and financial crimes. The APS office then developed a partnership with Wachovia Bank for cross-training of bank personnel and increased sharing of records to stop financial exploitation of seniors. This partnership had remarkable results and was later shared as a successful practice with the fraud reduction committee of a national bank consortium, known as the BITS Financial Services Roundtable. The bankers responded with enthusiasm and committed to expanding upon this model for national dissemination within the banking community.

Over 100 financial institutions are represented on the BITS Roundtable, including Wachovia, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase. U nder the auspices of the BITS Fraud Reduction Steering Committee, and with technical assistance from AoA and other members of the aging network, such as the National APS Association, and AARP, the BITS Vulnerable Adult Project Team developed and distributed the BITS Fraud Prevention Toolkit: Protecting the Elderly and Vulnerable from Financial Fraud and Exploitation, designed to address special needs for which financial institutions are uniquely suited to assist. The Toolkit provides information to support the implementation or improvement of a financial institution’s internal program for education and awareness about abuse, fraud, and exploitation against the elderly and vulnerable adults.

The Toolkit and PowerPoint slides for training are available for free download.

AoA also funded the development of the Stetson University Consumer Protection Education Project, a statewide effort to educate elder consumers, their families, and professionals about consumer fraud. As part of this project, Stetson produced 15 consumer scam videos targeted to seniors. These are designed to show how a scam works, how easy it is to become a victim, and include information on what to do to protect yourself or if you are a victim. Stetson also created four Public Service Announcements (PSA) and two additional public information videos on consumer protection and telemarketing, featuring General Norman Schwarzkopf; Marie Smith, AARP President; Senator Max Cleland; and H. Douglas Lee, president of Stetson University.

With these tools, they have conducted over 300 education sessions on consumer fraud at such places as senior centers and churches to more than 9,000 Florida seniors. They have also trained professionals by providing over 61 regional law enforcement trainings, 18 legal aid and private attorney continuing law education credits, and distributing their replication manual to 31 law schools.

For more information and to view the videos, visit: http://elder.law.stetson.edu/index.php

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