On April 18th, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Treasury issued an analysis on elder financial exploitation. As banking professionals know, financial institutions are required to report suspected cases of financial abuse to FinCEN in a document called a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR), which contains a flag box for elder financial exploitation. The most recent FinCEN analysis reported that from 2022 to 2023, approximately $27 billion in suspicious activity related to older customers. For purposes of the analysis, FinCEN distinguished between what they called “elder theft” cases, in which the victim knows the offender, and “elder scams,” where the perpetrator is a stranger. In the cases that were identified by financial institutions and then reported to FINCEN, elder scams accounted for 80% of illicit activity. This finding contrasts with a number of studies, based on self-reported elder financial abuse in which the largest percentage of exploiters are family members of the older victim. At any rate, “FinCEN’s analysis highlights the critical role of financial institutions in helping to identify, prevent, and report suspected elder financial exploitation,” according to the head of FinCEN, Andrea Gacki.