SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The FBI is sounding the alarm after seniors in San Diego County reported losing at least $108 million in elder fraud scams in 2024.
“Just in the last two weeks, I've had two victims, both of them reported over $2 million stolen from them,” said Michael Rod, a supervisory special agent with the FBI.
Rod told Team 10 that more than 1,300 victims over the age of 60 reported being scammed last year in the county.
The average loss per senior was $80,000 and Rod believes there are more victims who were too embarrassed to come forward.
“I've had doctors, lawyers, judges, pilots, engineers, all have fallen victim to this stuff, like very smart, intelligent people,” Rod told Team 10 investigative reporter Austin Grabish.
The crime has become so rampant in San Diego that a special task force is now being deployed to address it.
Police officers from every local law enforcement agency in the county, along with social workers, the FBI, San Diego County District Attorney’s Office and Adult Protective Services, all work under one roof as the San Diego Elder Justice Task Force.
“It's a first of the kind model,” Rod, the commander in charge of the task force, said.
One brazen crime law enforcement is seeing almost daily involves couriers who show up at elderly residents’ homes to collect thousands of dollars in cash the senior has been tricked into handing over.
The courier gets up to $1,000 a pickup and launders the rest of the money overseas.
“Oftentimes we see that these couriers are coming from the greater LA area,” said the FBI’s Nicole Mondello, who is assigned as an officer to the San Diego Elder Justice Task Force.
Criminals working overseas, often in India, start the scam by tricking a senior in a sophisticated overpayment or tech support scam.
Carlsbad resident Dale Marsh almost handed over $50,000 to a criminal two days before Thanksgiving last year.
“I'm looking at my Chase bank account, and it shows … $50,000 had been deposited into my account,” Dale said.
Dale, 75, woke up one morning and got a text message thanking him for buying three products from Norton antivirus.
The retired salesman thought the text was legitimate and called the 1-800 number listed in the message to let the company know there was a mistake – he never purchased Norton.
Soon, he was talking with a friendly man named Roger, whom Dale called “very polished, very professional, very non-threatening, very corporate business-like.”
Roger asked Dale to enter $500 on a screen on his computer and claimed the money would then be transferred back to his account.
“But he made a point of saying, ‘You only get one time to do this, and you have to enter it correctly,’” Dale recalled.
Dale followed the instructions but said the screen changed to $50,000 instead of $500.
When he looked at his checking account, he saw he had $50,000 extra.
“I was a little scared, a little fearful thinking, here's a $50,000.00 wire transfer.”
Roger claimed he would lose his job if he didn’t get the money back and said he’d send a courier to get the cash, Dale recalled.
A couple of hours later, a man wearing an LA Dodgers hat had arrived outside his home to pick up the money.
Undercover sting ends with arrests
Dale’s wife, Chris, had overheard her husband on the phone and wondered if the call was legitimate.
“And as I'm overhearing it and the drama's continuing, I thought, I'm just gonna call the local police department, a non-emergency number, and see if they're familiar with a scam of this sort,” she said.
Carlsbad police were aware of the scam and quickly arrived, along with the FBI, who set up an undercover sting operation and gave Dale $50,000 in fake cash.
Dale soon handed over a shoe box filled with the fake money to the courier, who was then arrested.
“And I kidded him..., I said ‘I'm a Padre fan, I don't like the Dodgers.’”
The FBI believes the couple’s computer had malware on it that let the scammers gain access to their bank account and move $50,000 from an equity line to their checking account, Mondello said.
“Because it looks so legitimate, sadly enough, it takes your trust away,” Dale said.
Millions returned to victims
Rod believes San Diego Elder Justice Task Force is a model for the rest of the country.
“Once we had centralized reporting by all of our local law enforcement agencies, we realized the extent of the problem.”
Just last year, his agents were able to give $7.5 million back to victims in San Diego as part of an operation dubbed Counter Strike.
In the end, four people were arrested for trying to defraud Chris and Dale Marsh. The FBI is now actively investigating a greater transnational crime ring connected to the incident.
Mondello commended Carlsbad Police for the department’s handling of the case and said early intervention is critical.
“I've talked to victims who have lost their entire life savings and they're not sure about paying rent, getting food. They feel shame and embarrassment because they fell for this scam.”
The FBI is warning seniors to avoid clicking on pop-ups and not to fall for scammers who create urgency on the phone, like ‘Roger’ did in this case.
“They're going to put a timeline on something and say you have to act by this time and generally, it's not enough time to think something through,” Rod said.
Victims of cybercrimes are encouraged to report them to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
