Why Women Are Victims of Scams More Than Men
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
With your money briefing, I'm J.R. Whelan at The Wall Street Journal in New York.
Why are women and young people targeted by scammers more than other groups?
Women and young people are victimized by scammers and fraudsters more often than any other group. In a moment, we'll have tips for protecting yourself against fraudulent emails, as well as bad guys pretending to be the IRS. First, these money and market stories you should know. Consumers weren't bashful about opening up their wallets during the holiday shopping season, but their crystal ball is a bit cloudy looking ahead. The conference board says that consumer confidence dropped in December, likely as a result of the stream of stock market sell-offs, as well as the continuing concerns about the Trump administration's trade actions this year. The conference board's director of economic indicators says expectations regarding job prospects and business conditions weakened, but still suggests the economy will continue expanding at a solid pace in the short term.
And Wall Street often uses economic data like new home sales, housing construction, trade figures, gross domestic product, and inflation to gauge the direction of the economy, but the Commerce Department says it will not publish that data as long as the economic shutdown is still going on. The Labor Department, however, says it's full steam ahead and will publish data on jobless benefits in the monthly employment report as well as other inflation measures, whether the government is open or not.
Unfortunately, financial scams are a way of life for Americans, and they're losing more than $100 billion each year to scams.
How do life circumstances make older women especially vulnerable to fraud?
But there's a troubling storyline to scams as well. That's that women are more at risk for being victimized by scammers than men. And certified financial planner Bill Francovilla joins us with details. So, Bill, why are women particularly at risk?
I guess we have to keep in mind That the scammers are always seeking out the most vulnerable among us. This has nothing to do with gender relative to intelligence or emotional capacity or anything like that. It has to do with station in life. J.R., if you consider for a moment that women outlive men. And oftentimes, these women find themselves perhaps living by themselves for the very first time. There may be some cognitive issues that are wreaking havoc on their decision-making. Well, the bad guys know this. And as a matter of fact, that becomes one of their primary targets. They're looking at older women living alone for the first time, maybe having some of these shared responsibilities inherent upon them for the very first time.
And they're reaching out and they want one of two things. They want their money or they want their personal information so they can access their money. It's not fair. It's happening. It's happening with far more frequency today than it did last year, certainly five years ago. And we have to take a stand against it.
So, Bill, how is it that these fraudsters have fine tuned their skills at fooling people?
They are evolving and they are so good at what they do. This as an industry, if you will, has re-established itself and they seem to be keeping one step ahead of our authorities. A case in point, my sister-in-law, lost her husband a couple of years ago well guess what his obituary showed up in the local newspaper within the week she had a phone call from someone purporting to be with the IRS and they wanted and demanded money that she and her husband owed them on back taxes she had never dealt with taxes before not by herself so she was in a quandary and she did the right thing she called the police and they did the right thing by reassuring her and dispatching police officers to her home to make certain she was okay.
But it's become an art form for them. You know, you referenced that there were $100 billion that was scammed in any one given year. Those are the reported scams. Consider the number of scams that go unreported simply because people are maybe they're too embarrassed or maybe they don't even know they've been scammed.
Let me ask you this.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–0:09
2
Why are women and young people targeted by scammers more than other groups?
0:09–1:38
3
How do life circumstances make older women especially vulnerable to fraud?
1:38–4:36
4
What tactics have fraudsters refined to trick people over the phone and email?
4:36–5:59
5
Which types of scams most commonly victimize women versus men?
5:59–6:58
6
Why are younger people being scammed despite being tech-savvy?
6:58–9:05
7
What practical red flags and steps can help detect phone or email scams?
9:05–10:21
8
How do IRS impersonation scams work and what major cases illustrate their scale?
10:21–10:23
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from WSJ Your Money Briefing
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