AARP Virginia Fraud Alert for July 18: Veterans Fraud Resource Center

One out of every three American veterans has had a scammer try to steal his or her benefits, according to AARP.

This statistic highlights how veterans, active-duty service members and their families are nearly 40 percent more likely to lose money to scams and fraud. To help combat these scams, AARP recently launched an online resource center focused on veterans-related scams.

Two common schemes to steal from veterans are pension poaching and medical device scams.

Shady investment advisors often target veterans with promises to “maximize” their pension benefit or offer to buy out their benefits. These offers often require personal information or up-front payments and rarely deliver on what is promised. Similar to the pension scams, health care offers of low-cost or free medical devices to disabled vets often require sharing their personal VA information only to find out that the device never arrives.

To find out more about scams targeting veterans and how to protect yourself from them visit aarp.org/VetsFraudCenter