A recent workshop dealing with Scams on Seniors had a session on how some home health care nurses, aides and attendants have been scamming seniors, and here are some of the ways:

* Stealing random checks from checkbooks and boxes of checks. Think about it, a "trusted" individual working in a senior's home no doubt will learn where the checkbook and boxes of new checks are stored. It would be rather easy to steal random checks (never the next one on top, and never in sequence); then, forging the owner's signature can be easy (and besides, what banks ever pay attention to signatures, anyway?). By the time the damage is discovered, it may be too late, and then there's the problem of proving who did it, and how.

* Stealing credit cards and using them to either perform identity theft or just to make unauthorized purchases.

* Stealing pain medications and either using them themselves or selling them on the streets. This is a very easy crime to commit against the elderly. Who actually counts the pills in a bottle? If one (or a few) is missing, such can be attributed a drugstore error in filling the prescription, or often it's a matter of the senior (or family member checking-in) simply attributing the shortage to forgetfulness.

* Fake charities. One scam involved friends of the seniors' attendants coming into the home and striking up a casual conversation about a "charity" they were involved in order to build trust and sympathy of the senior with the visitor. When the senior leaves the room to get her purse and checkbook, the visitors helps themselves to personal effects and other valuables. In other situations, the attendant leaves the room and the visitors follow and help themselves to what they want elsewhere in the house.

If you are a senior, or have a loved one, who relies on in-home care to help out with daily living activities, what can you do to provide protection against these unscrupulous characters? How can you identify those you can't trust so you can avoid them? Recognizing that, often, these criminals have a track record that can be identified, do we bother to check these people out before hiring them?

Some of us think that if we use a home care agency, that business will screen its employees and not send someone into the home who has a criminal record. But, unfortunately, that's not always the case. Many agencies are so desperate to find enough employees to fill the need, or experience such turnover in personnel, they'll take anyone who walks in off the street. Many agencies also won't spend the money on a background check.

Most states have a state agency through which you can perform a criminal background check either for free or a nominal charge. But, most of the time, that check is only for criminal charges brought against individuals within that state, but not other states.