FBI warning: Alarming rise in elder scams

Here are the top New Jersey news stories for Wednesday:

⬛ Scam Alert - Con artists target elderly at alarming rate

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The FBI is reporting an alarming rise in scams targeting older Americans.

More than $3.4 billion were lost last year.

The scams are becoming more sophisticated and brazen, the FBI warns. The crimes now often involve a courier who comes to a person house to collect money from the scam.

The FBI says more and more of these scams are being carried out by organized criminal enterprises.

⬛ Tragedy kills NJ grandfather and infant in backyard

Tragic deaths in Verona NJ (Verona Police via Facebook, Canva)

VERONA — A community is mourning a man and his infant grandson, both killed by an uprooted tree on Monday evening in Essex County.

The incident was reported just after 7 p.m., at a home in Verona along East Lincoln Street and West Lincoln Street.

⬛ Both drivers charged with vehicular homicide in wild NJ crash

(Google Maps/Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office)

EATONTOWN — Two drivers from Monmouth County are charged with vehicular homicide for running red lights while under the influence resulting in a fatal crash last summer, according to authorities.

The crash happened in Eatontown around 7:50 p.m. on Aug. 24, 2023 but Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond Santiago just announced the charges on Monday.

According to Santiago, the drivers of a 2006 Nissan Altima and a 2002 Dodge Durango both disregarded red lights at the intersection of Route 35 and Broad Street. The vehicles collided violently

⬛ Hotline open to report stink from landfall in Tinton Falls

Monmouth County landfill in Tinton Falls smell issue (Google Maps, Canva)

TINTON FALLS — There's a phone number to dial if the stink from a local landfill seems to be worse than usual.

Monmouth County has a hotline for residents who want to report an odor complaint related to the reclamation center located off of Asbury Ave.

Residents say and officials acknowledge that the foul smell has been stronger this year.

⬛ Odd battlelines drawn in effort to overturn NJ law on smoking

Casino workers in favor of banning smoking in Atlantic City demonstrate outside a courthouse in Trenton, N.J., April 5, 2024, after filing a lawsuit seeking to force a smoking ban. On Monday, April 29, 2024, Atlantic City's main casino workers union asked a judge to let it intervene in that lawsuit. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

ATLANTIC CITY — Atlantic City's main casino workers union and the New Jersey attorney general on Monday asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a different union that seeks to ban smoking at the city's nine casinos.

Local 54 of the Unite Here union said in a filing in state Superior Court that a third of the 10,000 workers it represents would be at risk of losing their jobs and the means to support their families if smoking were banned.

Don't get fooled: Here's 24 scam texts I received in just one month

Although some may be humorous, others appear legit. Here are 24 texts I received in just one month's time, as well as one I'm surprised I never got.

Spam texts are listed in the same order that was received.

Gallery Credit: Mike Brant

High expenses necessary to raise just one kid in NJ

Living Wage calculates the average costs and salaries necessary to raise children in a given region or state across the country. Below is the 2024 breakdown for just one child in New Jersey.

Gallery Credit: Mike Brant