People looking to make an easy buck by creating scams that specifically target elderly populations will face a harsher penalty under a new law that will go into effect Thursday.

The penalties for civil lawsuit violations for investment fraud involving older populations will be doubled under the new law. The current maximum fine is $250,000 for multiple violations and $5,000 for a single violation.

For criminal cases, the maximum fine is $10,000 and six years in prison if convicted. The new law will increase the possible fine by $5,000 and the possible prison sentence by five years.

An elderly person is defined as someone 65 years of age or older, said Patricia Struck, securities administrator from the Division of Securities in the Department of Financial Institutions.

In the past, the DFI has warned seniors to be on the lookout for “senior specialists,” which are people who pretend they have a certain level of knowledge or training in senior issues, and then try to scam elderly populations who may trust them.

The new law, Struck said, targets people who commit types of fraud involving stocks, bonds, partnerships, limited liability companies or anything you would normally think of as an investment.

Investment fraud can also include anything where someone receives some kind of return without getting involved in the legitimate business, Struck added.

While the DFI did not have any statistics for how many elderly people lost out to these types of scams every year, Struck thinks the new law is necessary.

“We do know that of all the people who have complained of [these types of cases], at least half involve older investors,” Struck said.

Professor Gerald Thain, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin Law School, is in favor of the new law because scams involving the elderly have been a matter of special concern for consumer protection agencies and advocates for the elderly.

Many times, elderly people have something that younger populations do not — a bundle of savings that have grown over their lifetime.

“The targeting of elderly people by scam artists occurs because elderly people often have ‘nest eggs’ or savings in larger amounts than those of the general population,” Thain said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald. “[The funds are] usually accumulated from a lifetime of working and saving.”

In some cases, elderly people are more susceptible to fraudulent activities because of diminished physical or mental capacity. In some instances, elderly people live alone, and this loneliness can cause them to engage in conversations with strangers who are trying to scam them, Thain added.

Thain believes harsher penalties for investment fraud against the elderly is appropriate.

“Taking advantage of a class that may, as a group, be described accurately as more vulnerable than the general population, justifies stronger sanctions,” Thain said.

While stiffer penalties may not eliminate the efforts of scam artists to prey on elderly consumers, stronger penalties may deter such efforts, and at the very least, make the punishment more fitting to the crime, Thain added.