Florida residents over the age of 60 reported 17,147 internet crime complaints and $709,823,172 in losses in 2025, second in the nation in both categories, according to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report. Nationally, complaints from that age group rose 37% and reported losses rose 59%, to $7.748 billion.

Writing in Forbes, Kelly Phillips Erb covered a CareScout study ranking states by how safe they are to grow old in and drew the right conclusion from it: fraud has become a retirement planning risk rather than a consumer protection footnote. For anyone who has spent a career as a Florida asset protection attorney, that conclusion lands on an uncomfortable fact about the work.

Every structure I build stops a creditor, not a phone call

Florida's protective architecture is genuinely strong. The homestead protection in Article X, section 4 of the Florida Constitution has no dollar cap. Tenancy by the entirety shields property held by a married couple from one spouse's individual creditors. A charging order under Fla. Stat. § 605.0503 keeps a judgment creditor out of a multi-member LLC.

Notice what those have in common. Each defends against someone taking property from an unwilling owner. None of them operate when the owner authorizes the transfer herself, which is exactly what a successful scam produces. That is why this is an estate planning problem before it is a litigation problem. The control has to exist before the call comes.

The definitions do most of the work, and they aren't about age

Here is the part most people get wrong, and it matters because it determines whether any Florida remedy is even available.

Picture a Seminole County retiree, 72, still managing her own portfolio, who gets a call from someone impersonating her bank's fraud department and wires $200,000 over two days. She is competent. She is not an "elderly person" within the meaning of chapter 825, and she is not a "vulnerable adult" within the meaning of chapter 415. The statutes written to protect older Floridians largely do not reach her case.

What Florida law does give you

Where impaired capacity is present, the toolkit is real.

• A graded felony. Section 825.103 makes exploitation of an elderly person or disabled adult a first-degree felony at $50,000 or more, a second-degree felony at $10,000 or more but less than $50,000, and a third-degree felony below that. It expressly reaches a breach of fiduciary duty by a guardian, an individual trustee, or an agent under a power of attorney. A corporate trustee sits outside that clause.
• A civil claim with a fee provision. Section 415.1111 gives the vulnerable adult, a guardian, a personal representative, or a person acting on the adult's behalf with consent a damages action. A prevailing party "may be entitled to recover reasonable attorney's fees," which is discretionary rather than automatic but changes the economics of pursuing a relative who drained an account.
• An injunction that doesn't wait for a prosecutor. Section 825.1035 creates a cause of action for an injunction against exploitation of a vulnerable adult, with remedies extending to freezing assets and credit lines.
• Mandatory reporting that already covers your bank. Section 415.1034 lists bank, savings and loan, and credit union officers, trustees, and employees, plus chapter 517 dealers and advisers, among those who must immediately report a reasonable suspicion of exploitation to Florida's central abuse hotline, 1-800-962-2873.

Read your power of attorney before you need it

The single most common structural failure I see in Florida estate planning is a durable power of attorney that quietly grants an agent everything.

Pull your document out and look at the margins. If every one of those lines is initialed and a single adult child holds the document alone, you have granted broad authority with no counterweight.

The revocable trust does not supply the counterweight

So a funded revocable living trust, by itself, creates no reporting obligation to anyone except the person whose judgment may be the thing at risk. Oversight in a revocable trust is something you draft in deliberately: a co-trustee whose signature is required above a dollar threshold, a named person entitled to receive statements, a successor trustee with a defined trigger, a trust protector with a narrow and disclosed role.

The tax bill survives the loss

The financial damage does not stop when the money leaves. A distribution pulled from an IRA or 401(k) to satisfy a scammer is taxable income, and the additional tax on early distributions can apply on top of it.

The deduction picture is narrower than it used to be and broader than most summaries suggest. The personal casualty and theft loss deduction was suspended by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act outside federally declared disasters. What survives is the deduction for a theft loss incurred in a transaction entered into for profit, which is why an investment scam may still support a deduction while a romance or grandparent scam generally will not. See IRS Publication 547, and talk to your CPA about your facts. Erb's survey of state relief, including Wisconsin's deduction for retirement funds lost to exploitation, has no Florida application for a simple reason: Florida has no personal income tax to deduct against.

Frequently asked questions

Build the control while nobody thinks you need it

The architecture that beats a creditor does nothing against a persuasive stranger, and Florida's protective statutes mostly arrive after capacity is already gone. The controls that actually work are the ones installed while you are sharp enough that nobody would say you need them: a power of attorney scoped on purpose, a co-trustee with a real signing role, a second set of eyes on statements, and a brokerage that knows who to call.

Our team handles integrated Florida asset protection and estate planning as one continuous structure rather than two separate purchases. If you want your documents read with this specific risk in mind, call 844-842-2774 or download this week's Family Oversight Audit to run the diagnostic yourself first.