HALF a million older people have lost money to fraud and scams, according to charity chiefs who are demanding that the Government set up a task force to tackle the menace.

The elderly are particularly vulnerable to fraud and some criminals are deliberately targeting those with dementia because they are considered easy prey. In a letter in The Daily Tele

graph today, fraud experts and charity executives say that their efforts to fight the crimes have been hampered since the 2014 closure of the National Fraud Authority.

The signatories write: “We call on the Government to act now to establish a scams and fraud task force and to ensure that we have an accurate national fraud measure to track this insidious crime.”

Fraud costs individuals at least £9 billion each year, according to estimates.

“Anyone can fall prey to a scam,” the letter reads, “often through plausible sounding phone calls or texts, but older people are particularly at risk – half a million of them have lost money through scams.

“The number of people with dementia is increasing and, appallingly, some crooks deliberately search out these kinds of vulnerable people in order to defraud them. The impact on victims can be devastating.”

Research published by Age UK earlier this year found that the majority of elderly people in the UK have been targeted by fraudsters in telephone, online or door-to-door scams, but most never report it.

A Populus survey for the charity found that 53 per cent of those polled realised that they had been on the receiving end of an attempted scam and 70 per cent of those people had lost money as a result.

Although more than half had received some form of communication by telephone, post, text message or email which they suspected to have been a scam, 60 per cent had never reported it.

More than one in 10 knew of a friend or relative who had lost money through a scam in the past two years alone, the survey found.

Pensions reforms which came into effect in April and allowed people to take large sums of cash out of their pension schemes could make older people a greater focus for fraudsters, Age UK has warned.

The charity has said it fears the problem will get far worse as rising numbers of older people suffer from dementia.

The growth in the number of older people using the internet has also given fraudsters more opportunities to con them.