Attorney General’s office offers seniors tips to avoid scams

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Skip Consoulin, Jr. (left), a spokesman for the Illinois Attorney General's office, speaks Jan. 18 with Eugene Golemo (center) and Sidney Bass about the types of fraud that scammers target senior citizens with. (Ronnie Wachter~Sun-Times Media)

What to beware of

• Anyone asking for your Social Security Number, date of birth, drivers license number or the serials for any bank, credit card or department store account.

• Anyone who calls you, claiming to be performing “account maintenance” on your credit card or department store charge account. Never give personal information to someone who initiated a call to you.

• Contractors who want you to pay all or a large portion of their fee before they begin working — once they have the money, some are apt to disappear. A generally accepted method is to pay in thirds, Skip Gonsoulin Jr. said. Legitimate contractors may need money up front to buy materials for your job.

• Anyone who says you have won a lottery or sweepstakes you did not enter. These scams will often “require” you to wire a fee “for taxes” to another state or country.

• Debt collectors calling the wrong person. You may have the same name as the person they are trying to track down, and you will have to prove that you truly are someone else. To stop these calls, get a “consumer complaint form” from the attorney general’s office; you will need the name, phone number and address of the collection agency.

“All of this stuff is fake,” Gonsoulin said. “None of the names are real. They’ve got fake IDs to support this fake stuff.”

The Illinois Attorney General’s office can be contacted at (800) 386-5438 or www.ag.state.il.us/consumers.

Article Extras

Updated: February 2, 2012 4:11PM

To illustrate how dangerous it can be to throw away junk mail without shredding it, Skip Gonsoulin Jr. read through Ralph Cianchetti’s mail.

But weeks before Gonsoulin, an Illinois Attorney General’s office spokesman, came to Lincolnshire, Cianchetti had learned Gonsoulin’s lesson, when someone stole his identity.

Gonsoulin brought years worth of cautionary tips to the Sedgebrook retirement home Jan. 18, speaking to a room of about 50 senior citizens about the methods used by predatory scammers. Fraud happens through the mail, on the phone, by knocking on a potential victim’s door and a number of other ways, he said, but they all include one common element: a trusting elder giving away personal data.

“You are the first line of defense,” Gonsoulin said. “We don’t want you giving that information away.

“Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve been a victim of identity theft, this isn’t going to go away right away.”

Consumer fraud is the largest division of the attorney general’s office, he said, and battling senior-targeted scams is one of their biggest tasks.

But nothing in that agency moves quickly, he warned. The attorney general received 24,000 complaints last year, and each victim went six to eight weeks from their filing a complaint to hearing back from an agent.

Gonsoulin added that the office is not populated by private attorneys. They will mediate between the supposed victim and the supposedly fraudulent business or individual. But the service is much cheaper than lawyers and lawsuits.

“It doesn’t cost you anything,” he said. “These are your tax dollars at work.”

The most important thing seniors can do, Gonsoulin said, is shred their junk mail. Dumpster divers can steal an entire bag of garbage, fish out an unopened invitation for a credit card, fill it out, and put their own address down.

“The banks don’t know who you are,” Gonsoulin said. They will issue a card to the thief, then hold you accountable.

To that end, he shared Cianchetti’s woeful mail-tale. Cianchetti said he had fallen victim to several scams, some because of the mail he did fill out and return; he has since learned to identify bogus sweepstakes and offers.

“There’s always a $20, $25 fee that they ask for,” he said. “I’ve done it a number of times, and I’ve never gotten anything in return.”

Other Sedgebrook residents talked with Gonsoulin about mix-ups with businesses. Eugene Golemo spoke of the $25,000 a stock brokerage owes him, and the shell game they continually play with his account.

“They won’t tell me even where the thing has moved to,” he said. “I can’t be the only person involved in this, but I can’t find my money.

“It’s a mystery company, and I’m like a mystery man.”

Gonsoulin said his office relied on tips, though it cannot look into claims from anonymous sources.

“A lot of the stuff we find out about comes from you all,” he said. “You may not be the only one.”

The session was organized by the office of state representative Carol Sente of Vernon Hills.