Waltham class helps older adults avoid internet scams  

Scammers use AI-generated voices to fool people that their family member is in trouble and needs quick money.

They target “the weakest moments” when people are most vulnerable. 

And they use schemes such as phishing and spoofing to trick their victims into disclosing sensitive personal or financial information. 

Those were some of the lessons at a recent presentation  at the Waltham Senior Center titled “Money Smart for Older Adults.” The class is aimed at arming senior citizens with the tools they need to protect themselves from people who attempt to steal their money.

“Elderly adults are … easy prey for these types of scams,” said Jorge Martinez, who co-taught the class on Feb. 18. 

Northern Bank employees Martinez, a commercial loan specialist, and Sara Amzough, a commercial lending closer, have been teaching anti-scam courses in Waltham and several neighboring towns as part of the bank’s effort to warn against internet scams that “dupe” older people into giving out their personal financial information. 

Online internet scams targeting adults ages 60 or older in the United States have skyrocketed over the past several years. Fraud losses reported by older adults have grown from about $600 million in 2020 to $2.4 billion in 2024, according to the most recent data by the Federal Trade Commission. 

In 2025, the Waltham Police Department received 296 reports of scams or fraud, officials said. A department official said police do not have data on the breakdown of types of scams or the age of the people reporting them. 

Martinez said phishing scams are when senders are searching for individuals’ private account information so they can commit fraud or identity theft. He said spoofing happens when a scammer disguises an email to look familiar to the people being scammed. 

Red flags for possible scams

Linda Luke, a Brighton resident who attended the class, said she appreciated the information. 

“There’s so much new stuff coming out, and a lot of elderly [people] might not know it because they don’t go out that much. They don’t communicate too much with other people,” Luke said. “So it’s good to have a class like this with different examples.” 

During their presentation, Martinez and Amzoug provided examples of common internet scams, including messages that appear to be from organizations the individual may do business with, such as banks or insurance companies. 

She and Martinez also provided tips on how senior citizens can avoid computer or internet scams, including being cautious about opening attachments or downloading files from emails, using trusted security software, making strong passwords and not being reliant on caller ID to authenticate phone calls. 

Martinez advised attendees to pay attention to messages with spelling errors or messages with hyperlinks in a font size larger than the rest of the text, as those often indicate a scam. They also urged participants to report scams to the local police.

Additionally, Martinez said banks should not be requesting personal information to be verified by email. Instead, he said users should call their bank directly if they receive any messages related to their finances. 

“We work for banks, so we usually would never ask you to verify your information because we have your information,” he told the attendees. 

Both he and Amzough recommend that seniors delete any suspicious emails or messages from unfamiliar sources and download security software that scans their computer.  

Seniors at the event pledged to remain vigilant. 

“I’ve heard the same spiel a million times, but sometimes it penetrates a little further into the brain,’’ said Carol Dargie, an 81-year-old Waltham resident who attended the class.  

“So maybe [I’ll] think twice before I’m one of these [stories],”