Romance scams are well known among many people under 50, but did you know they can hit seniors, even in rural areas? Michelle Reinen is the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture’s Administrator of the Division for Trade and Consumer Protection. She says regardless of age, romance scams can cost large amounts of hard-earned money.

“This might seem surprising that we’d say that this impacts older consumers, but it does. Maybe they are a widow or widower, and they’re just seeking companionship and friendship, and so they’ve gone online to try and meet a friend group or maybe find that person that they’re connected to, so we have that romance scam aspect of things. This gets tied to emotions, so this is very difficult if you have a family member who is engaged in a romance scam to get them to realize it is a scam and back away.”

She says the losses can be devastating to those getting scammed.

“You have to go into this with great sensitivity and compassion and understanding, and often, this results in hundreds of thousands of dollars being lost and transferred. We hear stories where an individual was so connected to the scammer that they believed the romance was true and legit even though they’ve never met the person in real life, and they were ‘pretend-overseas.’ The bank had to do what we refer to as ‘divorce them’ because they would no longer transfer that amount of money to this scammer for fear of what it was actually supporting overseas.”

Reinen talks about what to do if you believe an elderly relative or friend may be getting scammed.

“You have to lead with empathy and understanding. There must be no victim blaming because these scammers, this is their profession. This isn’t about the consumer who’s been victimized. They’ve been targeted and victimized. It’s not their fault that someone very talented on the other end is targeting them to hand over their money and information, and so you again need to go into it to listen and work through it together because you don’t want that individual, that grandparent to shut down and not tell you what’s happening in their life.”

Reinen talks about a good way to begin the discussion.

“Just say, ‘Hey, Mom, what’s going on? Who’d you hear from today?’ And that’s an open question. Not ‘what scam calls did you get,’ but who’d you hear from today? And then they’ll express all the different types of contacts that they had, and then ‘well, what do we think about that one?’ instead of ‘Oh Mom, that’s a scam.’ Let’s hear the story. Let them tell their story and work through it together and how they can problem solve together. ‘Can you handle contacting consumer protection, or do you want me to make that phone call?’”

For more consumer protection tips, go to datcap.wi.gov.