New state law looks to prevent financial scams on vulnerable adults

NINA MOINI: I'm Nina Moini. You're listening to Minnesota Now. And as always, we thank you for choosing to spend your time with us. Reports of financial exploitation of vulnerable adults in Minnesota have risen steadily over the past few years. That's according to data from the state. A vulnerable adult is a legal category for adults who have difficulty caring for themselves without help. It includes people with disabilities as well as older people in assisted living or nursing homes.

A new state law allows a court to more quickly step in if an older adult is being scammed or stolen from. A judge can even freeze assets under the law, which took effect January 1. Amanda Vikstrom is executive director of the nonprofit Minnesota Elder Justice Center. And she joins me on the line now to tell us more. Thanks so much for your time, Amanda.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: This is so important, right? Everybody knows someone in their life who-- you worry about them falling victim to something, some of us with older parents and things like that. Tell me a little bit more about this law that just passed and how it's helpful.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: Yeah, great. Yes. And people of all ages are being scammed every day.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: And I think every person, like you said, can think about an experience in their family or somebody that they know. This law really creates an order for protection mechanism that can target financial exploitation of vulnerable adults. So it can really get in quickly through a court order, where the court can provide some relief to essentially stop the bleeding of financial exploitation that might be happening to a vulnerable adult by freezing bank accounts, by freezing assets going out the door.

NINA MOINI: OK. So like before, there was a kind of a lengthier process through a conservatorship. Can you talk about how that was slower, how long that takes?

AMANDA VIKSTROM: Yeah, that's a lengthier process, both in terms of actually-- it doesn't freeze bank accounts. And it could take a couple of weeks to actually get in place. So by then, especially when you think about scammers, who are out of state, unknown to the victim but have really-- the calls that we all get are really using fear and tactics to get at someone's money. That money is gone quickly.

And that conservatorship process is a process that eliminates many of the financial rights of that vulnerable person-- so you're really taking away their rights to make their own decision-- but also can take a couple of weeks before the courts can get in and decide if that's the route to go. So this order for protection mechanism can happen in a matter of hours or a day and is a temporary relief that the court can provide while everything is being sorted out.

NINA MOINI: Because I assume it's very hard to recover money once it's been stolen. And sometimes it's in great amounts. Is it hard to do that?

AMANDA VIKSTROM: It is very hard to recover money once it's gone. So it is much easier to stop it from going out the door in the first place. When we think about-- and this law, we hope, will be particularly useful in those unknown scammer cases. It can also be used where that perpetrator is known.

But when you think about the pressure that these professional scammers use, pretending they're the government, or pretending there's urgency, or building a relationship with someone that isn't real online and really persuading that person, maybe in a time of loneliness or isolation, to help them out and give them money, they're really taking advantage of them, it's really hard to get that back. Because we don't always know who the person on the other end of the phone or the computer link really is.

NINA MOINI: Wow. Yeah. I wonder if there are situations where you would recommend somebody not take the step to get the order for protection and freeze their assets.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: That's really going to be an individual-- this is a very case-specific tool. This is not the right tool for every case. And so it's really going to be the individual working with their loved ones, an attorney, the courts to really determine if this is the right step.

NINA MOINI: Sure. So you know I mentioned at the top of this segment that reports of financial exploitation have been increasing in the past few years. Do you have any ideas about why that may be? Is that something that you've observed in your work?

AMANDA VIKSTROM: We absolutely see an increase in financial exploitation. And we see it really as part of almost every case of elder abuse that we work with. So we work directly with victims, older, vulnerable victims who are experiencing abuse, neglect, financial exploitation, maltreatment during their life. And we know statistically that 1 in 10 older adults will experience some form of abuse at some point during their life. And when there's a cognitive impairment, that risk goes to 1 in 5.

So as we age, our risk for financial exploitation and elder abuse increases. And when we think about elder abuse, we often see-- very often-- several types of abuse occurring at one time. And very often, it's to get at that older adult's resources-- their money. They might own their home. They have that Social Security check coming in. They might have medicine. And so whether it's a known perpetrator, a family member, which happens probably 2/3 of the time-- more often, that perpetrator is known to you. It's someone sitting around that Thanksgiving table.

We hear more about the scammers. And I think that's probably an easier thing to think about because it's not somebody that we know or love that is hurting us. So we do see it increasing. We really see it as a way to get at the assets that older adults hold.

NINA MOINI: Do you think, I wonder, Amanda, if technology is moving at such a fast pace right now-- we talk about artificial intelligence a lot. You can even replicate people's voices, to your point about loved ones. Do you think that the law is effectively keeping up with the technology? It seems like technology is moving really fast.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: I think that we do see and we will see even more uses of-- for all the ways that technology benefits us, this is an area where it will continue to cause harm. The scammers are very, very good without great technology. But we do have technology, online technology, where it's not even a real person, but it looks like a real person. So even in the ways that a scammer tries to prove who they are, it appears real. And it's not. And it can fool anyone.

NINA MOINI: Anyone.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: I think we all think it really can't happen to us. And I am here to tell you it can happen to anyone. So when we add in any type of vulnerability, that population becomes even more susceptible to it.

NINA MOINI: So, Amanda, in the couple of minutes I have left with you, let's talk a little bit more about some tools or solutions. This law, again, like you mentioned, creating the ability to freeze everything down for a minute is one way. But what about people who may be struggling with ways to talk to a relative, or a family member, or a friend, or anybody about these types of topics and wondering how to help put up some boundaries but not take away from anybody's autonomy?

AMANDA VIKSTROM: Absolutely. I appreciate the question. We do have a lot of information on our website. So I would offer that as a free resource to any of your listeners. But having these conversations openly about, with all of us, what do we want with our own money, resources, how we live? As we age and can't make decisions for ourselves, it's important that we are having conversations with our loved ones and making legal powers of attorney, making legal selections on who should make decisions for us. Who do we trust to do that if we can't?

So we can protect ourselves by picking people that we do trust to make those decisions so that bad actors, whether they're within our family or strangers, have a tougher time coming in when we need assistance. I think it's really helpful to have-- making sure we're in relationship with each other and really looking at isolation. Are we only talking to our loved ones, our older adults at Christmas or at a holiday, or are we in constant relationship with them?

The more we can reduce isolation and have multiple people in somebody's life so that we have actual trust, that helps them go and be able to say like, hey, I got a call from my grandson, and he's desperate for help now, and having people in our lives to constantly check in a meaningful way really helps somebody reach out for help.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Keep the lines of communication open. Keep asking questions, Amanda, thank you so much for coming by Minnesota Now and talking about this. It's so important.

AMANDA VIKSTROM: Thank you so much. Amanda Vikstrom is executive director of the Minnesota Elder Justice Center.