Hang onto your purse in the supermarket, move your garbage cans, and don’t fall for the “grandparents scam” were some of the bits of advice offered by Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan at a Council on Aging crime prevention talk.

Ryan, who headed the DA’s Elder and Disabled Persons Protection Unit for 20 years, described at the September 23 session some of the ways that senior and others are sometimes victimized by criminals. The #1 way that people over 60 have money stolen, she said, is by leaving a purse in their shopping cart—and most victims don’t even know it until the store’s security personnel, who saw the theft on surveillance cameras, chases down the thief and retrieves the bag.

Other crime prevention tips offered by Ryan:

• Move your trash cans inside your garage or far away from windows. They make an easy stepladder for thieves to break in through a high window.
• Don’t open the door to strangers, even if they don’t seem dangerous, such as a woman saying her car has broken down or whose child needs a bathroom. While you’re keeping an eye on the person after you left the door open, an accomplice could very well be ransacking the front room.
• Don’t leave your car door unlocked while you’re loading groceries in the back. It takes just a moment for someone to grab your purse off the front seat.
• Keep tabs on your medication. Pharmacy workers with addictions may leave your bottle of painkillers a few pills short or substitute a different medication, so count your pills and know what they’re supposed to look like. Also, if you’re having a real estate open house, don’t leave prescription medicines unlocked in your medicine cabinet.

Ryan also offered some detailed advice on financial safety for seniors. Over one recent six-week period, her office handled cases in which over $1 million had been stolen, “and it’s largely people you know using perfectly legal means to take money from you,” she said.

Joint bank accounts and powers of attorney are prime avenues for theft. Seniors sometimes put a relative or trusted friend on their bank account to help pay bills, but that other person “legally owns all the money in the account even if they haven’t contributed any of it,” Ryan said. “There’s no obligation to use that money for you.”

If you want to give someone access to your funds while you’re hospitalized or away for the winter, put into the account only the amount of money you think will be needed for that period of time, rather than your entire checking account.

“Even if the person was very trustworthy at the time you put them on the account, life changes—there could be a lost job or a bad divorce,” Ryan said. “We’d be wealthy if we had a dollar for every time someone said, ‘I was only going to borrow once. Mom wouldn’t mind if just this month I paid my mortgage and then I’ll be back on my feet next month.’ But they’re never back on their feet and the money never goes back.”

Giving someone power of attorney works much the same way. “When you give someone your power of attorney, you have legally made them you—you have cloned yourself. So anything you could do to your property, they are completely free to do,” Ryan said. The solution: include a time or dollar limit to the power of attorney, and don’t give the power to multiple people.

Guard your personal information closely, Ryan said. Phone scammers often claim they’re from the bank and lost your account number, or they’re from the IRS and need to collect on unpaid taxes, or you missed jury duty but can clear it up by paying a fine.

By using information that’s readily available on social media, a scammer might call to tell you your grandson who’s away at college was arrested last night and asked if she could send bail money. It sounds because they know the grandson’s name and what college he attends, “so you stay on the phone because they’re giving you information that’s true,” she said.

Whenever someone asks for payment or financial information, “never give that information over the phone,” Ryan said. Also, although scammers may sound helpful, “they’re always rushing you. Take a minute, step back and think about it.”

Sometimes victims eventually realize they’re been deceived but are reluctant to report it. “People just get embedded in these stories and are really unable to accept how badly they’re in on this, and embarrassed to go to the police,” Ryan said.

This also applies to people who knock on your door offering to do a job for you and then demand an excessive fee. Victims may be frightened and hand over a check, but Ryan urged them to call the police immediately, even if it’s after the fact.

“Even if you think you’ve done something you shouldn’t have done, jump in and stop it,” she said. “Go to the police and let us warn everyone else.”