SCRANTON — The Lackawanna County commissioners approved a scam-prevention program to prevent fraud that targets older adults and other vulnerable people.

At their meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Chairwoman Brenda Sacco and Commissioners Chris Chermak and Bill Gaughan approved a pilot agreement between the county Department of Human Services and a firm called SilverShield Inc.

SilverShield uses education and outreach coordinated through elder abuse task forces or elder justice multidisciplinary teams, and the program operates in Virginia, North Carolina, New York and Pennsylvania, said Lackawanna County Area Agency on Aging Director Sara McDonald.

“It is a tool which empowers older adults to protect themselves from scams and fraud through text messaging, email or on the web,” McDonald said.

Scams are a nationwide problem with billions lost each year, she said. Residents of the county have been among those victimized by scams of various kinds, including financial and emotional frauds and imposter schemes.

While scams can affect a wide range of people and age groups, they often target older adults or socially isolated or lonely individuals, McDonald said. Victims might feel shame about having been scammed, “but we are encouraging them to seek support and share their experiences,” she said.

Under the agreement for a pilot SilverShield program in Lackawanna County, the Area Agency on Aging will purchase 25 Silver Shield licenses at $45 each, for a total cost of $1,125, funded out of block grant monies.

The Area Agency on Aging will distribute the licenses to people, including scam victims, to reduce risk and prevent further victimization, McDonald said.

When contacted about a potential scam, the SilverShield program will immediately review the suspicious text, email or message and provide easy-to-understand, personalized guidance on what the recipient can do to stay safe. The program also has features to report, with one click, suspicious inquiries to the Federal Trade Commission and FBI, and to warn family members and friends about scams.

“Stop scams before they spread. SilverShield makes it easy to alert your loved ones and report to the right agencies — all with just a few taps,” according to a county description of the program.

Licenses will be managed through a SilverShield administrator portal, through which Lackawanna County can assign licenses to individual users or revoke them. SilverShield also will provide flyers, brochures and other promotional materials to support the pilot program, which will last one year unless extended by mutual agreement.

“This program is really, really simple, but it’s really powerful to spot dangers and help our elderly people stay safe,” Gaughan said. “This is really smart and proactive.”

Over the last decade, an upsurge in scamming attempts evolved from email to text messages and phone calls, some with people pretending to be from law enforcement or the IRS, according to archives of The Times-Tribune. Scammers have often directed people, especially older people, to purchase gift cards. A rising wave of artificial intelligence also now allows scammers to more readily blast out robocalls and emails, and clone recorded voices and use them to drain a person’s finances.

In June, as part of annual World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, Lackawanna County held an event to highlight the ways older adults increasingly experience abuse, neglect and financial exploitation, locally and beyond. At that time, Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging Jason Kavulich — who is a former director of the county’s Area Agency on Aging — said financial exploitation, whether done by a family member, a scam or someone else, has now become the largest category of elder abuse in the state.

Some examples of recent scams locally included:

• In September, a phone scam involved fake claims of missed jury duty. Scammers posing as county officials falsely accused recipients of having missed jury duty and demanded payment of fines to avoid prosecution. The scammers would direct prospective victims to pay the fake fine, which they didn’t actually owe, at a nongovernmental location.

• In July, two scammers approached a homeless man in Scranton about making some easy money by cashing a check for them. They had a check from an unsuspecting entity’s checking account. They had the homeless man cash that fraudulent check at a bank in Clarks Summit and turn over the cash to the scammers. The homeless man never got any money but was charged with theft and receiving stolen property.

• In March, a 70-year-old Dalton man was scammed out of $36,000 after being deceived into making two deposits into a Bitcoin ATM machine and sending the money to the perpetrator, state police at Dunmore had said in a news release at that time.