A recent Wall Street Journal article by Jennifer Levitz reported that financial scams targeting seniors are on the rise, and states are responding by increasing penalties on scammers.
Seizing on fear of stock-market turmoil, sales people and fraudsters are hawking investments that claim to be “low-risk,” or a supposedly safe way to invest in the stock market and earn back losses. In fact, the products may be complex and have significant downsides.
Special mention, at least in Arkansas, goes to free lunch seminars. The seminars are pitched to seniors as educational events with complimentary lunch, but are sometimes nothing more than sales opportunities for unethical brokers who misrepresent financial products and aggressively push products that are inappropriate for older people. The article contains a helpful list of questions you might want to ask before investing.
According to the article, Arkansas recently passed a law doubling the civil penalty for securities violation when the victim is 65 or older, and ten other states (I counted Michigan, Idaho, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) have either recently passed, proposed, or are expected to introduce legislation aimed at financial scammers who target the elderly.
Read the full article here.
SE
- A side note to subscribers of the blog’s feed and e-mail updates. The blog has been moved to a new web address, http://trustsestateslaw.com. It also has a new and improved design. Click over, take a look, and let me know what you think.
Related posts:
Post a Comment