Beating the Fraudsters and Scammers

Gary Barg: Ken, what's the scope of the fraud problem that our senior adults are facing?

Ken Clipperton: It's a huge problem. One of the major avenues for fraud is the telephone. The FBI internet crime center’s 2020 report on elder fraud said that senior adults were defrauded out of more than $1 billion and the average loss was between 9 and 10 thousand dollars and that more than 2 thousand people were defrauded out of 100 thousand dollars or more. So, it's a huge problem, and unfortunately appears to be a growing one in spite of various legislative efforts to try to curb that.

Gary Barg: In what ways, specifically, are these fraudsters and scammers hurting our families?

Ken Clipperton: The fear of losing money to the scammers makes folks hesitant to pick up the phone. And so, there's a twin to the fraud problem, and it's isolation. When I first started researching these solutions, it was for one of my wife's friends whose parents were living in their own apartment. Her dad was beginning to have some dementia issues and by the time they realized what was going on, they'd been scammed out of a significant portion of their life savings. Before I was able to find a technology-based solution, one of her siblings had moved them from their independent apartment into that sibling's home and felt forced to take away their telephone. For the parents, all of a sudden, now their friends can't reach them directly. This was damaging due to the isolation that it causes.

As well, I learned that one of the major causes of falls is a senior adult rushing to answer the phone. They want to get there while it's still ringing and of course, much of the time, the call is a robocall or a scammer trying to reach them.

Gary Barg: How are you helping solve these heartbreaking challenges with Caregiver Technology Solutions?

Ken Clipperton: My goal is to defeat both isolation and fraud with technology solutions that I've identified and adopted. These are things that I helped my own parents with and since then, other friends and relatives. Which is to be able to stay connected safely and age in place with dignity.

Gary Barg: You are so correct. I believe so much in the value of dignity, self-worth and even cognition for our loved ones.

Ken Clipperton: Yes, that's right, isolation is harmful to cognitive ability. We are dedicated to helping maintain those connections with the solutions I've identified. It is about identifying technologies that are able to be configured in such a way as to be useful for family caregivers and senior adults, especially those living with dementia. And so, for the caregivers, I've designed or created online courses and implementor's guides to just help them be able to step right through the process of configuring this as an optimal way to protect their loved one according to their current level of need.

Gary Barg: Okay, let's get into the nitty-gritty. Talk to me about some of the specifics of these solutions that you've put together at CTS.

Ken Clipperton: Great. One of them is simple, and I call it connected family photo frame, it's just taking an Amazon Fire tablet, and loading particular slide show software on it that's available in the Amazon store, and then configuring it so as soon as they turn on the tablet, the show starts automatically. If they want to, they can take a Zoom call or check things on the web or even watch a movie. When they're done using the tablet and plug it in, the software can just restart the slideshow. I've always been the family techy and finding something that could be easily supported remotely was important.

Gary Barg: Well, that’s the extent of my technological acumen.

Ken Clipperton: I created a shared photo album and then invited family members to join that album and then contribute photos. It was that easy. One of my nieces, who had been a professional photographer earlier in her life started crying. She said, "Because when I took pictures, I said I should print a copy and send it to Grandma," and she said, "I never did." But once she had this, she could take a photo, hit the button to the shared album, chose Grandma Betty's name, and she knew fifteen minutes later, it's going to show up on the screen in her room.

Gary Barg: I need one of those.

Ken Clipperton: At the hospice house where Mom spent the last months of her life, one of the hospice nurses said, "I'm going to make my daughter figure out how to do this." And right now, I'm offering that course for free. This is using a commercially available technology, and now I provide guidance that you can get from Caregiver Technology Solutions to implement that.

We have one running by our microwave right now that has that same photo show. We all could have those in our homes. So, it became like a shared connected family photo album. Really cool and again, very inexpensive to implement.

But also protecting Mom from fraud as before this, she was constantly going into Facebook to see what was going on with the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. When she had this, those photos just showed up. She didn't have to put herself at the risk of being online with those other tools. It's just the photos. In the last few months of her life, she kind of lost some part of the desire to use her laptop, but the photo frame let her easily keep up to date with the family.  

Gary Barg: Let's dig deeper. What other products and solutions are available?

Ken Clipperton: What I think the most important solution I'm offering right now is built on top of Ooma Telo 4G. If you're familiar with home voiceover IP systems, this is one of the top-rated solutions for the last nine years. They've got hundreds of thousands of lines in place. What made it suitable as a caregiver solution is that it can be managed remotely via either a web interface or a smart app on the phone. The main thing, in terms of blocking fraudsters, is it can identify four different classes of calls coming in; ones that are anonymous, ones that are known robocallers, ones that are known scammers and suspected scammers and then calls that look legitimate. You can determine right in the web interface what happens to each of those classes of calls. Do I let them through and ring the phone? Do I send them to voicemail? Do I give them a "you've been blocked" message? Or do I send them to ring forever, but never ringing Mom's phone.

At the most protective level, you can only let the people on Mom's contact list through to ring the phone, and then send what looks like legitimate calls to voicemail. Then I, as a caregiver get a notification that there is a new voicemail for Mom. I can listen to it, I can actually add that person right to Mom's contact list if appropriate and I can call that person back and say, "Hey, Aunt Ruth, I saw you tried to call Mom. Great. Please give her another call, and that'll ring through to her now."

With the Ooma solution I chose, it actually uses a 4G cellular signal to carry the calls. And so anywhere you have a power plug and a 4G cellular signal, you can take your home telephone, phone number and phone device. When Mom would go to rehab, you can unplug the one from home, plug it in at rehab. Coming out of rehab, if you move in with a child for a few weeks, just plug it in at their house. For Mom, when I brought her home telephone to the hospice, she could call everyone in her circle of friends and they could still reach her. Usually if you go in the hospital, rehab, or whatever, you lose connection with a certain portion of your friends because they don't know how to reach you anymore. This lets you stay in connection. 

Gary Barg: And you have the security of it being Ooma.

Ken Clipperton: Correct. It's a widely deployed, very popular solution. You can buy it at Best Buy and Amazon online and eBay and all kinds of other places. But if people buy it through me, I also include the code to unlock the implementor's course and guide at no additional charge.

Gary Barg: Great. What else have you got?

Ken Clipperton: There are other solutions I've identified that can even be more restrictive, like the GrandPad. There are things where the only people that can email, text or call you, have to have that specific app on their phone and be in your contact list.

Gary Barg: What caused you to create CTS?

Ken Clipperton: It started with my wife's good friend and her parents getting scammed. And after my mom passed away last May, I've taken all these things I'd learned, and with talking with my friends and my pastor and said, ”I feel like I ought to help other families get these same things.” Because even as a person who had 25 years of telecommunications and IT management, it took me hours and hours of trying to find something that would work as a caregiver solution.

And as I started contacting the solution providers, it was actually the VP of Marketing at Ooma who really appreciated what I was doing. Actually, he had close family members scammed, and he set up what became a national partner agreement for me, for US and Canada. He said that he couldn’t dedicate someone full-time to this, but he’d like to enable me to foster a network solution and market this to caregivers all across USA and Canada, their service area.

Gary Barg: Great. That leads to talking about your network of independent caregiver techs. That's fascinating. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Ken Clipperton: Basically, I want to enable people that are already helping others to be able to do well while doing good. Through my agreement with Ooma, for someone who would implement these solutions once it's been in service for 90 days, Ooma will send me a check, and through me, send $70.00 for each of those systems implemented. And on top of that, they could either charge or not charge for their assistance they're providing directly to folks. I think it's a great fit for people that already are caregivers themselves or are home tech services companies that provide tech support to Wi-Fi, laptops and desktops, to add this as another income stream for them, where they could charge for the implementation services, and earn a commission check come through me, from Ooma, for those systems.