When a 72-year-old retiree in Cleveland received what looked like an urgent email from her bank, she didn’t think twice before clicking the link.

“It had the logo, the right colors, even her bank manager’s name,” said Nancy Lyn Muckle, founder of Problems Solved, Inc., a Cleveland-based company that advises families on fraud prevention. “She only realized it was fake after they asked her to re-enter her Social Security number.”

This older adult avoided disaster by hanging up the phone and calling her bank directly. But others have not been so fortunate.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans age 60 and older lost about $4.885 billion to fraud in 2024 – a 43% increase from the year before. Seniors filed 147,127 complaints, the highest number of any age group. I

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