Kirk Lanam of Hartland is accused by the state Attorney General’s Office of embezzling more than $400,000 for himself and his nonprofit, while Shelley Letzer of West Bloomfield allegedly stole thousands by, among other means, writing herself checks. Both were arraigned in an Oakland County district court.

About two out of three older adults report someone attempting to scam them and are uncertain about their ability to identify fraud schemes, according to the Michigan Poll on Healthy Aging from the University of Michigan.

Michigan is a leading state in the number of residents 65 years and older, said Cynthia Farrell, the division director of adult services in the Department of Health & Human Services.

Referrals to Adult Protective Services have steadily increased since 2000, and there were more than 4,000 financial exploitation referrals in the 2024 fiscal year.

The number of cases referred to Michigan’s Adult Protective Services has risen substantially in recent years. Source: Department of Health & Human Services.

A new Michigan State University study done in rural communities shows preventative training empowers family caregivers, service professionals and seniors to report and prevent financial exploitation of older adults with cognitive decline.

The study by social work professor Fei Sun divided participants into two test groups in Otsego, Crawford, Marquette and Alpena counties.

In the first and most effective test, caregivers and their elderly relatives were educated on financial abuse.

Then, caseworkers from the community, trained by the researchers, followed up with home and virtual visits to identify risks, goals and strategies to reduce fraud.

In the comparison group, family members and vulnerable seniors received one group lesson on exploitation at community centers.

Sun then surveyed the participants six and nine months later to test the program’s effectiveness.

Sun said even if communities lack the resources for caseworkers, the study shows that “simple community-based education, even just the one time, could be beneficial in raising people’s awareness and preventing financial abuse and fraud.”

Annie Hepburn is the director of the Alpena Senior Citizens Center and a participant in the study. Through a home visit, she found one of the center’s seniors was a victim of financial exploitation.

“Moving forward, I worked with him on plans on what would be real and what isn’t real,” Hepburn said. “You can’t just trust everybody. If people are requesting money, that is a red flag.”

Hepburn said every day the center has members saying they were caught in scams, but the program through Sun’s study has strengthened the trust between seniors and caseworkers.

Even after the study, the seniors ask for more programs and still reach out to staff with questions, she said.

“I’m very excited to know that they are confident enough to come to us,” Hepburn said.

The study’s training curriculum was based on a course by Peter Lichtenberg, a national expert on financial capacity assessment and financial exploitation of older adults.

Lichtenburg, the past director of the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, said most agencies and organizations in the state, including Adult Protective Services, use his scale.

The first two chapters of Lichtenberg’s course are about assessing financial decision-making and patterns of exploitation. They break down how exploitation happens and include a vulnerability survey so seniors can recognize their risks.

According to Farrell, the director of adult services, a major risk factor for older rural Michigan residents is isolation because seniors have less access to resources in those communities and relatives often move away.

Lichtenberg said, “One of the things that happen with isolation is you tend to speed up your judgment and decision making and tend to be very receptive to anybody who is good at knowing how to present themselves as similar to you, having the same values, having the same beliefs you have.”

Farrell said scammers pretend to be lottery officials, romantic interests or grandchildren.

Schemes can pretend to fix fake bugs on computers, which she said are often seniors’ “ability to talk to other people and connect with the outside world if they are isolated.”

“We try to educate the public about those things,” Farrell said, “especially our seniors, who are usually the ones who have the cash, the assets that can be exploited.”

Free online resources for seniors, caregivers and professionals based on Lichtenberg’s course are provided at www.olderadultnestegg.com.

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Capital News Service is a wire service based out of the Michigan State University School of Journalism.