SCARSSCARS SCARS - Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc. A government registered crime victims' assistance & crime prevention nonprofit organization based in Miami, Florida, U.S.A. SCARS supports the victims of scams worldwide and through its partners in more than 60 countries around the world. Incorporated in 2015, its team has 30 years of continuous experience educating and supporting scam victims. Visit www.AgainstScams.org to learn more about SCARS.™ Special Report: According To New Science Financial ScamScam A Scam is a confidence trick - a crime - is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust through deception. Scams or confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, or greed and exploiting that. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men' - criminals) at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". A scam is a crime even if no money was lost. Victims Have Higher Risk Of Alzheimer’s
From Reuter’s Health
Older adults who are victims of financial scamsScams A Scam is a confidence trick - a crime - is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust through deception. Scams or confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, or greed and exploiting that. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men' - criminals) at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". A scam is a crime even if no money was lost. may be more likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease than elderly people who don’t get tricked by scammers, a small U.S. study suggests.
For the study, researchers gave scam awareness questionnaires to 935 older people who didn’t have dementia. Five questions assessed how open people were to sales pitches, how interested they were in potentially risky investments, and whether they understood that elderly people are more vulnerable to scams.
On average, participants scored 2.8 out of a possible five points, with higher scores indicating lower scam awareness.
After an average follow up of six years, 151 participants developed Alzheimer’s disease and 255 developed mild cognitive impairment.
Low scam awareness was associated with a 56 percent higher risk of Alzheimer’s and a 47 percent higher risk of mild cognitive impairment, researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“Decreased scam awareness may be a very early sign of Alzheimer’s disease – one that is present well before cognitive symptoms are recognizable,” said lead study author Patricia Boyle of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.
“Evaluations of behaviors such as scam susceptibility may help to identify who is at greatest risk of developing cognitive impairment and who may benefit most from therapeutic intervention,” Boyle said by email.
Alzheimer’s, which gradually destroys memory and thinking skills, is the most common cause of dementia among older adults. Inside the brain, Alzheimer’s is associated with abnormal clumps known as amyloid plaques and tangled bundles of fibers, often called tau or tangles. Scientists suspect that the damage begins in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in memory.
The only way to confirm an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is by doing a brain autopsy.
Researchers examined autopsy results for 264 people who died during the study. They found the brains of people with lower scam awareness had more damage associated with Alzheimer’s.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how scam awareness might directly influence the risk of developing Alzheimer’s or dementia.
One limitation of the study is that Alzheimer’s can take years to develop and the study may not have been long enough to detect al