Financial scams hit 17 percent of seniors

Seventeen percent of Americans over the age of 65, or 6.8 million people, have been taken advantage of financially through high fees, inappropriate investments or outright fraud, according to a survey.

The findings, the results of a survey done by Public Policy Polling for the nonprofit Investor Protection Trust, represent an improvement from a similar study taken in 2010, which discovered 20 percent of seniors had been victimized.

Those involved in the study said that seniors have become better educated about financial matters and that both the children and health care providers of seniors are more aware of medical problems that might diminish older people’s ability to make decisions about money.

Bloomberg News