Scamboree teaches elderly to avoid common scams

March 31--More than 20 senior residents attended the Scamboree event held Friday afternoon at the Joyce Raye Patterson Senior Center.

The event featured speakers, exhibits, presentations and games designed to give information on how to protect oneself from scams.

Todd Hurt from the Missouri Secretary of State Securities Division and manager of Vulnerable Citizens Services and Brian Henning with the Missouri Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) both gave presentations to the gathering on recognizing scams and how to protect yourself from them.

"We travel the state educating the public on investment fraud, how people get taken advantage of by investment scams, fraudulent scams and really try to educate on maybe some eye-opening experiences that we've investigated in our offices," Hurt said.

Hurt added that his office received 200 complaints a year with 100 of them being investigated and roughly 50 percent of those resulting in action.

"A lot of times, people fall victim to dementia or other kinds of memory loss so it's important for us to get out there and show them ways to fight this," Hurt said.

Cathy Amos, a 65-year-old St. Joseph resident, said she receives calls from phone scammers a lot and the information she learned at the Scamboree was valuable information.

"The basic thing is knowing that doing the right thing is not answering the phone if it's an unknown number because sometimes just answering the phone lets them know that it's a valuable number," she said.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @SJNPWeston.

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