by Derek Brouwer at Vermont Public Radio
For the last 4 ½ years, Jeanette Voss was forced to live a frugal life.
The 71-year-old Bennington woman rationed car trips so she didn’t run out of gas. She unplugged the coffee maker after brewing her morning pot to save electricity. And she checked her bank account balance each and every day, in part to track her spending — but also to be sure no one had managed to steal her money, again.
Voss is among the hundreds of Vermonters who collectively lose millions of dollars to cyber fraud each year. Older adults are most frequently targeted because they have the most assets to plunder. In Voss’ case, Seven Days previously reported that scammers made off with her entire life savings — $950,000 — leaving her to subsist on Social Security checks and food stamps.
The scam became a yearslong nightmare. Voss felt ashamed and embarrassed; decades of planning for a comfortable retirement had gone to waste. She had to fight tax bills and cope with lingering paranoia. She couldn’t afford to visit friends or family out of state. Her golden years largely became confined to her small house at the end of a dead-end street.
Then, late last month,…
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