State securities regulators will soon offer training for investment advisers and brokers to help them detect and report financial exploitation of elderly clients.

Next month, the North American Securities Administrators Association will make available to its members a training program called Senior$afe, developed in Maine for bank and credit union employees. The initiative will be modified to apply to other financial services professionals.

The program, created by the Maine Council for Elder Abuse Prevention, includes a presentation highlighting behavioral and account-management changes that may indicate a senior client’s cognitive decline and financial abuse. The other part of the training focuses on reporting incidences within a firm and to outside authorities.

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Just before the release of a survey about elder financial abuse, an arbitration panel awarded $34 million in damages, including hearing costs, to the estate of Roy M. Speer, a co-founder of the Home Shopping Network. The award is further proof that rich people are just as vulnerable to financial exploitation as anyone else. In fact, their immense wealth can make them even more susceptible. The case involved the investment firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and two stockbrokers. Speer died in 2012. His wife, Lynnda, brought a claim against the company, arguing that her husband’s estate and his foundation funds had been mismanaged.

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If you’re in your 50s or older, chances are good that financial fraudsters have a big red target on your back. That’s because they think you’ve got money to steal and are more likely to fall for the common tricks they deploy to part you from it.

Researchers at Stanford recently analyzed one powerful trick that fraudsters use to persuade you to set aside your normal good judgment: emotional arousal. It turns out that it doesn’t matter whether you’re aroused by negative or positive emotions. In either case, older people are more likely to allow their emotions to cloud and overcome their logical decision-making abilities.

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If you want to prevent credit card fraud, then you need to know how credit card companies treat fraud, the procedures for dealing with it, and your rights and responsibilities when it comes to unauthorized charges. This guide will walk you through the types of fraud you’re likely to encounter, spotting fraud when it happens, and reporting it to the proper authorities.

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The IRS and Justice Department scams are targeting your cash. The Microsoft scam, which will involve your being duped into downloading an actual virus, is going after your personal information. It’s fair to wonder, who falls for this stuff? “That’s the magic question,” replied Marti DeLiema, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity who focuses on financial fraud. “The answer is, there’s no easy answer.” She said researchers have found little correlation between a person’s age, say, or financial literacy and the likelihood of that same person being taken to the cleaners by con artists.

For example, it might be assumed that seniors are most easily fleeced because they’re so often targeted by fraudsters. But studies by the Federal Trade Commission have found that older consumers are less likely to be victimized than younger consumers, maybe because they’ve been around long enough to spot a pig in a poke.

Read the full LA Times article here.