Unfortunately, analyses of case studies of swindles reveal few danger signals and escape mechanisms.
HELPING OLDER AMERICANS COPE WITH CONFIDENCE SWINDLES: A PILOT STUDY
As older Americans are often victimized by confidence swindles (Friedman 1992), it was also decided to focus on this population subgroup.
In this phase a mail questionnaire was sent to federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as private organizations, which help consumers deal with confidence swindles. The mail survey was undertaken to gather national materials dealing with individual confidence swindles disseminated by these organizations.
The success stories related by the 304 older respondents dealt with 24 common varieties of confidence swindles. As noted in Table 1, a wide spectrum of attempted swindles emerged from the respondents' 304 reports, ranging from the familiar (e.g., auto repair) to the exotic (e.g., Jamaican Switch).