.jpg "A Florida man has pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud")
A Florida man has pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud “elderly victims” of more than $800,000 in savings, officials said.
A man has pleaded guilty to fraud charges in connection with a large multi-state “senior fraud” that involved impersonating different people, federal officials said.
For eight months in 2020, Michael Odell Anderson, 64, of Crystal Beach, Florida, and Dan Loring, Virginia, reportedly called people asking for thousands of dollars to help pay bogus court costs for an incarcerated relative — often a grandchild, according to a Nov. 7 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
According to the release, Anderson used a number of different identities as part of the scam, at various times posing as a police officer, a bail attorney, a courier or a relative of an allegedly incarcerated loved one.
McClatchy News could not immediately reach Anderson’s attorney.
Anderson, in addition to his accomplices, “regularly” received tens of thousands of dollars from “elderly victims” who withdrew funds from their savings accounts, federal authorities said. Anderson told them he would return the money later, the release said.
Using false names, Anderson and his associates collected funds from victims in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, as well as other states, the release said.
According to the release, they took more than $840,000 from at least 49 victims during the scam. Most of the money, more than 570 thousand dollars, was never returned.
Anderson faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, although “[a]Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalty,” the release said. He will be sentenced in March 2023.
Senior fraud is a common problem in the United States, affecting approximately “1 in 18 cognitively intact community-dwelling seniors each year,” according to a 2017 study in the American Journal of Public Health.
