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The Pitch Was Smooth, Her Pause Was Well-Timed
Karen Morgan fights scammers
AARP Maryland volunteer Karen Morgan poses for a portrait after her decluttering presentation in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Credit: Maansi Srivastava
Karen Morgan, AARP Maryland’s outstanding volunteer honoree, recalls the ring of her doorbell. On her front stoop stood two nice-looking women, offering a plan they said would cut her energy bill. They were convincing. Who doesn’t want to pay less for utilities, she remembers thinking.
But then she went into the kitchen to grab something. That pause gave her time to reflect. Wait, what were they offering? And why did they come to her door out of the blue? It would have been better if she had reached out to them, she recalls thinking, rather than accept invitations from strangers. She declined to accept the offer.
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Morgan, 70, an attorney and a former analyst for the state Legislature who evaluated fraud protection bills, was playing out the advice she gives to everyone as a fraud prevention volunteer with AARP: “Pause. Reflect. Protect.” That means take a step back and think before committing to an offer or financial “opportunity” that often comes at you unbidden.
Before her retirement in 2020, Morgan drafted a number of bills on identity theft prevention and co-authored a report on how identity theft laws are enforced in Maryland. Since then, she has been an AARP volunteer who leads fraud prevention seminars and events around the state and participates in town halls and public appearances to advise members and the public on how to avoid becoming a victim. She has also worked on fraud prevention at the national level, participating in town halls and fraud prevention seminars.
Kathy Stokes, senior director of AARP’s nationwide fraud prevention program, credits Morgan with being an early champion of the idea that people who become victims are not naïve but targets of a sophisticated group of highly professional criminals who can coerce anyone.
Morgan, Stokes says, “leapt in with both feet” on that idea. “She was the strongest advocate for that, and she still is,” she says.
Morgan stresses that fraud schemes are not about brain power.
“Fraud has never been about how smart you are,” she says. “It’s about how emotional you are.”
Take romance fraud, for example. “You think you found the love of your life,” she says. “That’s why Nobel Prize winners get scammed.”
Morgan, who lives in Prince George’s County, received the AARP Maryland Outreach Award in 2021 for her work with the Protect Week campaign, designed to help prevent elder financial abuse. In 2023, she received the AARP Maryland Communications Award as the organization’s leading spokesperson on fraud.
“Her work is making a real difference for individuals and communities across Maryland,” says Hank Greenberg, AARP Maryland state director. She “has a remarkable ability to connect with people and make a complex, often frightening topic both understandable and empowering.”
Morgan says that people often come up to her after one of her talks and relate their own experiences with fraud. Sometimes they are chagrined or ashamed. They need not be, she says.
Morgan says she is personally offended by people “who think it’s OK to steal.”
“What we are trying to do is remove this shame veneer,” she says. “I let them know that it can happen to anyone, and there’s really no shame in talking about that. In fact, we have to talk about it, because if we don’t, [the criminals] literally laugh all the way to the bank.”
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