You know the old scams. The mysterious prince who needs your bank account number. The letter announcing a prize from a contest you never entered. Most of us learned to spot those years ago.
The new ones are harder to catch. They arrive with a familiar voice, a trusted company name, or a chest full of medals. And they work on people who pay attention.
This week, our story about four real scams that fooled careful people was the most-read article on 65Nation. So we went back to the original reporting and follow-up coverage, and looked at what researchers have learned about why these schemes succeed.
Why Smart People Get Fooled
When researchers backed by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and the AARP Foundation studied investment fraud victims, they expected to find people who didn’t understand money. They found the opposite. The victims scored higher on financial literacy tests than people who had never been scammed.
The research found something else. Victims were more likely to have gone through a recent negative life event that had nothing to do with the scam. Something hard had happened in their lives, and they were still carrying it when the call came.
Doug Shadel, a longtime fraud expert who helped conduct AARP’s research, explained it to Vermont’s Seven Days newspaper. He suggested it may come down to “how you are at the moment of the encounter” more than who you are.
Shadel says most scams rely on three ingredients: building trust, stirring up strong emotion, and creating urgency. Put anyone in that state, and even a sharp mind stops checking facts.
In 2025, Americans over 60 reported $7.7 billion in losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, a jump of about 59 percent from the year before. More than 12,400 people in that group reported losing $100,000 or more.
And those are only the cases people reported. Here are the four stories, in full.
When Grandma Heard Her Granddaughter Crying
Christine is 86 and lives in South Philadelphia. In July 2025, her phone rang. On the line was a young woman, crying. It sounded exactly like her granddaughter.
The “granddaughter” said she had been in a car accident and the airbag had hit her in the face. She said the police were holding her. Then a man came on the line. He called himself John and said he was her lawyer.
John said it would take $10,400 to get her out of jail. Christine told him she didn’t have that much. He said they would take whatever she had.
She gathered about $6,000 in cash. John kept her on the phone until a courier arrived. A neighbor’s doorbell camera recorded a red car pulling up and a man walking to her stoop. Christine, ever careful, asked him for a receipt. He wrote one.
Then her grandson, who lives next door, gave her the news. Her granddaughter was at work. There had been no crash.
“I’ve known her since she was a baby, so I know her voice,” Christine told NBC10.
How the voice was copied
To show how easy this has become, Eric Wong, an assistant professor at Penn Engineering who studies AI, cloned the voice of an NBC10 reporter, with her permission, using one of her recent news reports. It took about 30 seconds to turn a one-minute recording into a fake soundbite.
Christine’s granddaughter pointed out the problem herself. She’s on social media. Anyone can find a clip of her voice.
The FBI has warned that criminals now generate short audio clips of a loved one’s voice to fake an emergency and demand money. In its 2025 report, the bureau counted more than 3,100 complaints from people over 60 that referenced AI.
What to do
- Pick a family code word, one that never appears online. The FBI specifically recommends a secret word or phrase to confirm a relative’s identity.
- If a “grandchild” calls in trouble, hang up and call back at the number you already have. Or call their parent.
- Ask a question only the real person could answer.
- Never hand cash to a stranger at your door because of a phone call.
- Keep family voices private where you can. The FBI suggests making social media accounts private and limiting followers to people you know.
The Soldier Who Never Was
For years, Jackie Stern was a hometown hero in South Florida. He wore the Medal of Honor in parades and at public events and told people he had earned it as an Army captain in the Korean War.
The medal itself was authentic, but it had never been awarded to anyone. Stern had bought it at a military memorabilia show. According to CNN, he never rose above the rank of private.
Broward County sheriff’s detectives grew suspicious of how eagerly he showed it off. When they questioned him, his story fell apart. Stern pleaded guilty to federal charges. The judge gave him probation and ordered him to write a letter of apology to every living Medal of Honor recipient, along with a public apology printed in the newspaper on Memorial Day.
Stern’s lie mostly cost him his reputation. A more recent case cost taxpayers real money.
Mikhail Wicker of Clay County, Minnesota, never served in the military. Federal prosecutors say he forged discharge papers and claimed to be a decorated Marine, a Purple Heart recipient and a former prisoner of war. The Department of Veterans Affairs gave him more than $140,000 in health care, disability and education benefits.
He even joined a Facebook group for Marines and talked a real veteran into vouching for him in a letter to the VA, MPR News reported. The veteran had no memory of serving with him.
The scheme unraveled when Wicker asked the VA to raise his disability rating, and the agency went looking for military records that didn’t exist. A federal jury convicted him in November 2025.
Why it works
Most of us were raised to honor service. Con artists count on that respect. A uniform and a row of ribbons can open doors, wallets and hearts.
What to do
- Under the Stolen Valor Act, lying about military honors becomes a federal crime when it’s used to get money, property or another tangible benefit, according to the National Archives.
- If someone asks for money based on heroic claims, take your time. Medal of Honor recipients appear on an official list kept by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
- Watch for stories that shift with each telling, or service details that don’t add up.
A Dream Vacation That Vanished
Santiago Machado of South Florida thought he had found the perfect family trip. A caller offered a vacation package at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, rooms and flights included.
Santiago paid about $6,000 for three rooms so his parents and in-laws could fly in from Cuba and spend a week with the grandchildren. His mother had never been on an airplane.
The reservations never existed. When the family tried to reach the sellers, the calls kept dropping. Eventually, the people on the other end simply mocked them.
“They were laughing on the other side,” Santiago told NBC6.
The money was only part of the damage. The family had also handed over personal information, including passport photos, and now worries about how it could be used.
One detail saved some of the money. Santiago had paid part of the trip with a credit card, and his bank returned those funds while it investigates.
Why it works
The Better Business Bureau says scammers often borrow the names of well-known companies to look legitimate. A famous resort brand and a great deal create trust and urgency at once.
What to do
- When a travel deal comes to you by phone, hang up and call the hotel yourself, using the number on its official website.
- Pay with a credit card. The FTC says it gives you the best protection, and you may be able to dispute the charge if you don’t get what you paid for.
- Refuse wire transfers, cash, cryptocurrency, gift cards and payment apps. The FTC says scammers prefer those methods because the money is so hard to get back.
A Pop-Up That Cost Nearly $1 Million
On Memorial Day 2021, Jeanette Voss was watching Netflix on her laptop at home in Bennington, Vermont. Suddenly, a siren blared, and a message filled the screen. Her computer had been hacked, it said. Call Microsoft.
She called. A man who said his name was Thomas Anderson silenced the alarm and delivered more bad news. Hackers had her Social Security number, he said, and a gambling website had received a $231,500 bet from her bank account.
Voss had spent much of her career at Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. She knew American tech firms often outsource customer support overseas, so the call seemed normal. When “Anderson” got remote access to her computer and her retirement firm’s name appeared on the screen, she was convinced.
A second man, “Alan Maxwell,” told her to move her savings into a “secure” cryptocurrency account until her identity was protected. They told her to trust no one. They had her buy a prepaid phone, which she nicknamed her “batphone.”
Over the following months, she sold investments and wired money again and again. Her own records show at least 15 wires between June and September. Maxwell fed her stories to tell bank tellers and listened in on the batphone. Three different banks questioned or refused her transfers. She kept going. The scammers had also told her not to contact her financial adviser.
By the time the calls stopped, about six months after they began, $950,000 was gone. She was left with roughly $10,000. Worse, the withdrawals counted as income, and she was hit with tax bills on money she no longer had.
Then came a rare happy ending. U.S. Secret Service agents traced $648,000 of her money to a cryptocurrency account tied to an international scam ring and seized it. On Christmas Eve 2025, Voss checked her bank balance and found $1,033,000, her full loss plus interest.
“Overnight, my whole life changed,” she told Vermont Public.
Why it works
Shadel told Seven Days that pop-ups like this often come from malware picked up while browsing. Panic does the rest.
What to do
- Close the browser. If it won’t close, restart the computer.
- Never call a number in a pop-up. Microsoft says its error and warning messages never include a phone number.
- Microsoft also says it doesn’t make unsolicited calls to fix your computer and will never ask you to pay for support with cryptocurrency or gift cards.
- Never give remote access to anyone who contacted you first.
- If a bank teller questions a transfer, treat that as your signal to stop and call someone you trust.
The Pattern Behind All Four
Look closely and every story borrowed trust: a grandchild’s voice, a hero’s medal, a famous resort, a household-name tech company. Each stirred strong feelings, from fear to pride to excitement. And each pushed for speed.
Two more warning signs appear again and again. The first is an unusual way to pay. Cash handed to a courier. Wires to a crypto account. Gift cards. The FTC is blunt on that last one: anyone who demands payment by gift card is “always, always, always a scammer.”
The second is secrecy. Christine was kept on the phone so she couldn’t call anyone. Voss was told to trust no one and to keep her adviser in the dark.
Notice, too, what could have stopped each scheme: a second voice. Christine’s grandson next door. The bank tellers who questioned Voss’s transfers. Anyone who could say, “Wait. Let’s check.”
Build your own safety net
- Choose a family code word and share it in person.
- Make a pause rule: you never send money the same day someone asks, no matter how urgent it sounds.
- Name one trusted person (a person, a son, daughter, friend, or banker) you’ll call before moving money.
If It Happens to You
First, set the shame aside. Every person in these stories was capable and careful. Voss has said she felt ashamed and embarrassed. That feeling is common, and the Justice Department notes that embarrassment and fear keep many victims from reporting at all.
Then move fast. In 2025, the FBI’s Recovery Asset Team froze $32.9 million of the $65.4 million at stake in fraud cases involving people over 60 that came through its rapid-response process.
- Call your bank or card company right away.
- Report it to your local police and to the FBI at IC3.gov. You can also report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
- The Justice Department’s National Elder Fraud Hotline, 833-FRAUD-11 (833-372-8311), can help you file reports. It’s staffed weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern.
- The AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline, 877-908-3360, is free for anyone, members or not. It’s open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern.
One More Thing Worth Remembering
Scammers do this for a living. They work from polished scripts and keep adjusting when one approach stops paying off. Getting fooled says more about their practice than your judgment.
The best defense is a handful of simple habits, set up before you need them. Agree on a code word. Hang up and call back. Pay only in ways you can dispute. Close any scary pop-up and never call the number it shows you. And if someone tells you to keep a financial matter secret from your family, that is the clearest warning sign of all.
