One out of every three American veterans has had a scammer try and steal their benefits. This statistic highlights how veterans, active-duty service members and their families are nearly 40% more likely to lose money to scams and fraud. To help combat this AARP recently launched an online resource center focused on veterans-related scams.

Two common schemes to steal from veterans are pension poaching and medical device scams. Shady investment advisors often target veterans with promises to “maximize” their pension benefit or offer to buy out their benefits. These offers often require personal information or up-front payments and rarely deliver on what is promised. Similar to the pension scams, health care offers of low-cost or free medical devices to disabled vets often require sharing their personal VA information only to find out that the device never arrives.

To find out more about scams targeting veterans and how to protect yourself from them visit aarp.org/VetsFraudCenter.

Be a fraud fighter! If you can spot a scam, you can stop a scam.

Visit the AARP Fraud Watch Network at www.aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork or call the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline at 1-877-908-3360.