My 86 yo mother-in-law lost ~$10,000 from her Chase account after a telephone scammer (pretending to be a Apple security representative) tricked her into providing information that allowed unauthorized access to the Chase account. Chase covered the loss. I doubt, however, if Chase would have covered the loss if my mother-in-law voluntarily initiated the wire transfers.
My elderly parents are easy pickings for these scamsters. When they were younger, they wouldn't give so much as a nickel to anybody trying to sell them something unsolicited over the phone and would slam the door on even Girl Scouts selling cookies. Now the both of them will willingly speak to telemarketers and if somebody calls pretending to be the bank trying to fix a problem, they will willingly give their social security numbers and credit card information. They don't even give it a second thought. Drives my siblings and I crazy.
The latest scam going around is the "Publisher's Clearinghouse" scam in which elderly folks are told they just won a brand new car and all they have to do to have it delivered is run down to the WalMart and buy some gift cards in order to purportedly pay down a 1% tax on the car so that it could be delivered to them. My mother called all excited about the brand new Mercedes Benz she was just told she won and asked for a ride to Wal-Mart so she could get the necessary gift cards to claim her prize.
It took my wife about 15 minutes to talk her down from Cloud 9 and convince her that she was just scammed. Fortunately, she never bought those gift cards but that's exactly what she was hell bent on doing at first.
I hope that I do not become that way when I get older.