District Attorney Seeks Support For Elder Fraud Abuse Prosecution Unit

Local law enforcement needs more resources to combat rampant cases of elder fraud, Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois said at an assisted living residence in Chatham on Tuesday, Sept. 30. 

During a presentation at Broad Reach Healthcare’s The Victorian with the Chatham Police Department on the dangers of and how to protect against scams and financial exploitation, Galibois said he noticed a trend developing in the early summer of 2024 in which detectives across the Cape were becoming increasingly consumed with elder fraud cases and their inability to work and investigate them. 

Over a span of nearly two years from 2023 to 2024, the Barnstable Police Department fielded 393 calls on elder fraud abuse, filed police reports on 253 cases and were able to charge in just 15 of them, according to Galibois.

“Clearly, they don't have the necessary resources to do the investigations to bring these cases,” he said.

As a result, Galibois is seeking to create an elder fraud prosecution unit within his office and asked for support, in the form of signed letters of endorsement for the proposed initiative in an effort to secure increased funding. The letters, he said, will be presented to Gov. Maura Healey and state lawmakers. 

Chatham Police Chief Michael Anderson, Lt. Sarah Harris and Officer Joseph Pagliaro also discussed recent local examples of fraud and how to best protect against getting scammed. Harris held up a manila folder filled with what she said were cases from just the past year the department had taken reports on.

“There's hundreds of thousands of dollars that are now gone from some of the victims in the town of Chatham,” Harris said.

Anderson and Harris both highlighted the need to report instances of fraud and scams to the police, despite the embarrassment typically experienced by victims. A common feeling among those who are defrauded is disbelief that they had fallen for a scam, to the extent that they don’t tell anyone about it, according to Anderson. Harris similarly said that victims should “tell everybody,” not solely reporting the fraud to the police but spread the word to others. 

“God forbid, if you're a victim, please do not be embarrassed to report it,” Anderson said. “We've seen and heard everything. Don't worry.” 

There are all different kinds of scams coming in that it’s “almost hard” to train officers, Harris said. But it’s easier to prevent a scam beforehand rather than try to recover someone’s money after the fact, so those that are unsure about, say, a phone call or someone at their door should just call the police.

“The scams, once we solve one, they come up with another one, and then they come up with another one,” Harris said. “They come up with another one. Your grandchild is not missing. Your sister is not in need of an attorney.”

Pagliaro described three local fraud cases, two of which involved small business owners who received calls from spoofed numbers in which the scammers somehow had the bank information of each victim and were posing as their fraud departments. The fraudsters leveraged the small piece of information they had — the bank each victim used — to the tune of about $4,700 in one case and $1,600 in the other.

The third example concerned an older town resident who had hired someone for general assistance. The hired person proceeded to steal and cash checks from the back of the man’s checkbook. 

The key to fraud protection, Pagliaro said, is to stay calm and slow everything down.  Scammers use urgency and a written script to sound convincing. 

“They have every trick in the book, and they've done it 100,000 times to 100,000 people,” he said.

There are red flags to look out for, like unusual phone numbers or requests for remote access to one’s devices and strange payment methods, such as gold or bitcoin, Pagliaro said. 

Local banks, Pagliaro found, have been better at picking up on those warning signs compared to the bigger national ones. A “summit” with local banks and representatives from district municipalities, at which the United States Attorney's Office is planning to be present, according to Galibois, is planned for Oct. 28

Galibois has petitioned select boards across the Cape and Islands in his effort to create a prosecution unit centered around elder fraud, which would use increased funding to hire forensic examiners, prosecutors and victim-witness assistants. 

He told those in attendance at The Victorian about a case within the last several months in Yarmouth wherein a bank customer made an unusual withdrawal of about $10,000, prompting law enforcement to be called. Police then tracked a driver who had been sent to pick up the money from the customer, following the car to a parking lot in Worcester, where another man — the scam organizer — was set to collect the cash. Law enforcement recovered the money and found the scam organizer’s boss. 

That boss, according to Galibois, was incarcerated at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility.