BILLINGS — Elder fraud is on the rise in Montana and nationally ripping away life savings and leaving victims financially and emotionally shattered.
On Tuesday, the Montana Department of Justice hosted an Elder Fraud Summit to raise awareness of scams.
Susan Bivens thought she was protecting her money. Instead, she lost her entire retirement savings to a sophisticated fraud scheme.
Watch Susan Bivens share her story:
Bivens first noticed a suspicious charge on her Amazon account in May 2022.
"It was a little over $500," Bivens said Tuesday.
She was able to get a refund, but more charges quickly followed.
"They were large, about $6,000 worth of charges, jewelry and video equipment," Bivens said.
Then the situation escalated. Someone claiming to be from Amazon called Bivens and transferred her to a man who said he was a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. He convinced her he was legitimate by sharing personal details she believed only a government official could access.
"He knew all that stuff about me. So that was another way of justifying that he was a government agent that had access to that information," Bivens said.
The man told Bivens she was implicated in a money laundering scheme and offered her a solution.
"We're going to open up a U.S. Treasury-secured locker to put your money in, and then we will give you a cashier's check of the money that you put in this locker," Bivens recalled the agent said.
He then instructed her to withdraw all of her savings.
"The first thing he wanted me to do was go to my bank and get out all my savings accounts," Bivens said.
A document he showed her appeared to confirm the arrangement.
"He showed me a copy of the cashier's check that was made out to me. It looked legit," Bivens said.
Once the money was sent, the man she knew as Randall vanished.
"Randall disappeared, and so was my money," she said.
She lost $240,000.
"I felt so embarrassed and so humiliated that I would fall for something like that," Bivens said.
Bivens moved to Montana in 2015 and bought a Victorian home in Anaconda to be close to her son and now grandchild. She said that she was enjoying retirement and spending time with family after losing her money.
"I realized I couldn't afford to keep that house. So I had to sell it, and I went from 2,500 square feet to 550 square feet of the house," Bivens said.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said he is treating elder fraud as a criminal priority and is pushing for dedicated investigators and prosecutors to handle these cases.
"My vision was, we want to put this in the criminal division. We want to treat this like the heinous crime that it is and ask them for a full-time criminal investigator for elder justice and a full-time prosecutor," Knudsen said.
For Bivens, the emotional toll remains.
"I'm emotional. I think I have a little PTSD. I think at times I get really frustrated, but I just really want people to know that there's things to look for," she said.
Bivens said that something good has to come out of the situation.
"I've always been a very optimistic, positive person," Bivens said.
Bivens did recieve $50,000 in restitution through the Lynn Egan Memorials Fund through the Commissioner of Securities & Insurance Office of the Montana State Auditor.
Bivens is a Montana fraud ambassador for AARP to share her story.
