Inside Jubilee Hall on Jan. 28, former Peabody Fire Chief Joe Mendonca spoke with conviction as he shared his concerns regarding scammers and fraud.
The dangers of scamming was the focus of a presentation, “Avoiding Scams and Scammers,” held at the Torigian Senior Center, where a crowd of nearly 30 people, most of whom were senior citizens, gathered to hear information on how to protect themselves.
“It’s really, really sad when you get at my age, 85, (and) you know, the memory starts to split, and it’s very hard to deal with all this,” Mendonca revealed to the crowd.
The presentation was led by Mayor Ted Bettencourt, Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker, Peabody Police Captain David Bonfanti, and State Auditor Diana DiZoglio.
“I think we need to do more auditing of all these nonprofits because I get all these people looking for money, and I have no idea if (it’s) legitimate or not,” Mendonca added.
In Essex County, Tucker said there was $11 million in documented losses just last year, but they “suspect that number is probably twice that,” given that only a handful of cases are reported. He said, in Peabody, specifically, there have been “at least a couple (cases worth) $100,000 that have been reported” since 2023.
“When somebody is scammed, and they realize it, oftentimes they feel a sense of shame that they were taken. They’re afraid to tell a family member. They figure that the police might not be able to do anything about it anyway. And in some cases, people don’t even realize that they’ve been scammed,” Tucker said.
The most common types of scams to be on the lookout for, Tucker said, are everything from social security to claims from the IRS or the U.S. government, requests for gift cards, and even fraudsters using artificial intelligence to mimic voices and impersonate family members and friends. While the elderly is especially vulnerable, anyone is at risk of being scammed. Even Tucker himself said he received just two scam calls that morning.
“It’s so pervasive,” he said. “Think of it from the scammers standpoint. They’re working in call centers. As I said, most of them are out of the country. If they make 1,000 calls a day, and they have a 1% success rate, that’s still a pretty good day.”
He then shared other examples of instances that have happened on the North Shore.
One Salem resident, who is retired, had a Fidelity account. He received a virus alert and then got messages accusing him of child pornography. While he didn’t think he did it, Tucker said, he “fell for it completely” and lost $100,000. He also warned of “phone persuasion” and gift card scams.
“We actually just interrupted one of these organized scam groups using gift cards. It was from overseas that was based in New York City, and it’s in the millions and millions of dollars. Nobody in any government agency or legit place would ask you to buy gift cards and give them the number from it,” Tucker said.
The threat of scams happening through Bitcoin machines, which are often inside of retail stores like 7 Eleven and gas stations, is a major concern. While they were banned in Peabody last October, there are still roughly 700 machines located across Massachusetts, Tucker said. With that, these scams in Bitcoin machines are especially difficult to investigate.
“When my office gets involved, we might be able to track the first one, maybe the second, but there’s so many multiple transactions that go on, we pretty much do not have much success at all in trying to track them down. The way these machines operate, the owners of them put themselves out as legitimate business people,” Tucker said.
There is currently a bill pending in the legislature that emphasizes three main points pertaining to Bitcoin machines, Tucker said.
The first will “make sure that every one of these Bitcoin machines has warnings on the front of it.” The second is to reveal hidden fees, and the third is to put a daily limit on how much money someone can deposit into the machines.
“The industry, by the way, is fighting us on this,” he said. “They have lobbyists working against this at the State House, as we speak.”
There has also been pushback on issuing refunds to anyone who has suffered fraud or a loss.
“If they want to get into the business of putting these machines out there, knowing that these things are basically a portal for scammers, then there has to be a price to pay for that as well,” Tucker said.
Both he and Bonfanti urged people to be aware of potential scams and to speak up if they suspect something is happening, which includes contacting the police.
When a scam is reported, Bonfanti said that the initial officer on the call will go out and document the issue, and if they can’t solve it, it gets sent over to the Criminal Investigation Division, which looks into it even further.
“That might be to the step where they might have to get a subpoena for wreckage or stuff like that,” Bonfanti said.
Peabody Police is also making an effort to share reports and post educational information on its social media pages, which is just one step toward progress for an issue that affects not just those in the North Shore, but across the country.
“The one thing that I’m going to ask you, as a captain from the police department, to help us is call us,” Bonfanti told listeners in the room. “If it doesn’t seem right, we’ll send the cruiser or up at the station, and we will look into it then. No one’s going to be embarrassed, and shouldn’t be embarrassed. Let’s get ahead of this.”
