New St. Johns County program to protect seniors from scammers and put money back in their pockets

ST, JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — Senior citizens in St. John’s County now have a program that will help put money back in their pockets and protect them from scammers.

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<

Attorney General Ashley Moody and St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick announced the grand opening of a new Seniors vs. Crime office.

[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]

Senior citizens are frequent victims of scams and frauds. With this initiative, they now have a group of people in St. Johns County fighting for them and protecting their wallets.

The new facility will be located within the St. Johns County Sheriff’s South Regional Operations Center and host Seniors vs. Crime volunteers, called Senior Sleuths, to assist older Floridians.

Regional Director of Seniors Vs. Crime, David Blacklock, said, “We try to educate them (seniors) about fraud and scams. This is so they would never get cheated.”

For those who have been scammed, Blacklock talked about getting seniors out of trouble.

Read: ‘We are booming:’ St. Augustine sees boost in tourism, economy since height of pandemic

“If they do get into trouble being able to negotiate, we have a means to negotiate a solution for them,” he said. “We tried to make the person who was done wrong hold again.”

The program helps the Attorney General’s Office and its efforts to stop scammers preying on senior citizens.

Sheriff Robert Hardwick said this will also help his detectives.

“It’s taking some potential caseload caseload off the detectives at the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office that can be triage by these volunteers like Russ Baer who is a retired federal agent,” Sheriff Hardwick said. “They understand how important it is to take these important cases and triage it.”

The Seniors vs. Crime program obtained an estimated $2.4 million in financial relief and realized gains statewide last year. The volunteer program secured an estimated $7.9 million since 2019 in financial relief and realized gains.

Read: ‘To prey on the vulnerabilities of our elders:’ Local non-profit helps elders be ‘scam smart’

Office manager for Seniors vs. Crime in St. Johns County, Russ Baer, said they expect to have a significant amount of recovery money for seniors this year.

“The number annually is about $2 million in recovery for seniors across the state of Florida,” Baer said. “Here in St. John’s County, we expect to be a busy caseload because of the influx of seniors in St. Johns County and of the quality of life and we look forward to that.”

[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Senior sleuths provided more than 25,000 hours of free services last year and nearly 90,000 hours since 2019.

Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.