Cyber-Enabled Financial Abuse of Older Americans: A Public Policy Problem

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2019-11

Department

University of Baltimore. College of Public Affairs

Program

University of Baltimore. Doctorate of Public Administration

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by the University of Baltimore for non-commercial research and educational purposes.

Abstract

Global cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime costs more than $400 billion annually with an estimated cost to the US of over $120 billion dollars annually. With the spread of cyber-enabled crime, a troubling trend has evolved in which the victim is unknowingly complicit in the offence. These incidents have arisen as an evolving public policy challenge at all levels of government, including municipal, county, state, federal, and global. This dissertation examines the social, economic, and policy characteristics of cyber-enabled elder financial abuse. Elder financial abuse perpetrated over the Internet straddles two challenging areas of public policy: cybercrime and elder abuse. In the context of cyber-enabled crime, this study first explains the mechanisms whereby individuals fall prey to abuse and second; conducts an older American cyber-safety needs assessment, which collects information to identify the extent to which regulatory policies either mitigate or contribute to the financial abuse of older citizens.