PORTLAND, Ore. -- With our economy in chaos, local fraud investigators say more and more people living on the fringe, may turn to white collar crime.

Their main targets are the elderly. It's a historical fact that crime rises during recessions and local fraud investigators say the situation is already getting worse.

Unit 8 has watched the rise over the past few months. We've shown you a lot of scams and met many victims. From Identity theft schemes that started with misleading phone calls to crooks dressing up as bank guards to mislead customers into giving them deposits.

Portland police investigators say white collar crime against seniors appears to be on the rise.

Oregon's Department of Human and Health Services reported 2366 senior exploitation cases in 2006 and 2617 cases last year. This year the numbers will almost certainly be record setting.

Chuck Whitlock is a fraud expert who creates videos to train police departments.

“I promise you there will be more con artists taking advantage of more people because of our poor economy,” said Whitlock.

Leann Wheat from Vancouver recently served time in jail for identity theft. Wheat said, “I did three transactions in one day and got about $50,000.”

She claims there were more than 200 people involved in stealing ids in Clark County alone. That was a few years ago, before the bad economy created so much desperation.

Whitlock said, “The desperation level, as it increases, con artists will come up with solutions. Right now there are dozens of con artists talking to seniors offering them extraordinary returns on their declining accounts.

Sometimes the con artists are relatives.

Following our unit 8 investigation Jacqueline Luper pleaded guilty to 10 counts of theft.

She took more than 20 thousand dollars from her 96 year old aunt's bank account.

Stories like that are growing more common.

If you’d like to learn more about how to protect yourself and your loved ones from white collar crime there’s a free upcoming event you might be interested in.

It’s called Scam Jam 2008 and will be held on Saturday October 25th. Newschannel 8’s Wayne Havrelly will be among the speakers

Link: ScamJam