Senior citizens lose at least hundreds of millions of dollars each year to  fraud and various scams, but it’s difficult to know the full extent of the damage, according to a panel of experts.

That is why financial advisors must play a more central role in identifying and combating elder financial abuse, panelists said during a discussion Wednesday at BNY Mellon Pershing’s 2019 INSITE conference in Phoenix.

Frauds and scams targeting seniors are unlikely to go away as an issue, said Jim Roth, managing director for global client relationships for BNY Mellon Pershing.

“It’s been called a hidden crime, in part because so many of the victims don’t want to prosecute,” he said.

On average, 10,000 Americans are now turning 65 every day, a rate of aging that is expected to continue over the next 10 to 12 years as baby boomers continue to cross the retirement threshold. “With that, we all know that our retirements could last as much as 30 years or longer today, so it’s something we have to address in the banking community and the investment industry in order to create a solution,” Roth said.

Americans between the ages of 60 and 79 most commonly fall victim to fraud and consumers in their 60s file twice as many reports of fraud as those in their 20s, according to statistics published in 2018 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

While consumers in their 80s made fewer fraud reports, they reported losing more assets to scams on average, according to the FTC. Americans aged 60 to 69 reported a median loss of $500 to financial fraud and those aged 70 to 79 reported a median loss of $619, but those over age 80 reported median losses of $1,100.

“What we find is that people over the age of 60 are good at spotting and reporting scams, but the people who are actually losing money who are older are ending up losing a lot of money,” said Kerry O’Brien, western regional assistant director for the FTC.

One reason it’s so difficult to calculate the real impact of elder financial abuse is that it often goes unreported, he said. The numbers the FTC publishes every year are likely “the tip of the iceberg,” said O’Brien.

Seniors may feel embarrassed or ashamed that they fall victim to fraudsters, panelists said..

Some types of scams are particularly embarrassing for elder Americans, said Thomas Halloran, president of Voya Financial Advisors. For example, romance scams involve someone pretending to be attracted to a victim, cultivating trust with the pretense of affection.

“As people get older, they tend to get lonely,” said Hallorran. “That’s a lot of it.”

Halloran noted that romance scams are often first recognized by an astute advisor. One Voya client, a man in his 80s, wanted to wire $20,000 to two different women in the Philippines who claimed that they wanted to come back to the U.S. The advisor asked a series of questions that revealed that the women were scamming the client.

Seniors are also particularly susceptible to imposter scams—callers or people online posing as tech support personnel or representatives of the Social Security Administration or the IRS. These scammers have become more sophisticated over time, panelists said.

“These scams have been really popular this year,” said O’Brien. “Not many people are falling for it, but many of the people who are are losing their entire life savings.”

People of all ages—especially older Americans—are falling victim to investment scams. Scams can often be recognized because they sound too good to be true, said Kathleen Johnson, a senior practice management consultant with BNY Mellon Pershing. Any investment that purports to offer high returns with low risk is most likely a scam, she added.

Johnson pointed out that victim of these scams aren’t necessarily suffering from dementia or cognitive decline.

“Even someone at full mental capacity can be sucked in,” she said.

In some cases, the person committing the fraud may be a family member or caretaker who would normally be on a senior citizen’s first line of defense against financial predators. In others, clients are falling victim to the “grandchild scam,” said Johnson, where a fraudster will pose as a relative in distress asking for money.

O’Brien said that it’s rare for victims and their families to recover assets lost to fraudsters.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these scam artists are out of the country and our hands are tied,” she said. “It’s like handing cash to someone on the street—and that’s why it’s important to prevent it.”