Chase Bank trains New Orleans seniors on spotting holiday fraud

Chase Bank held a fraud prevention workshop in Gentilly on Thursday to help local seniors protect their finances before the holiday shopping season begins.

The Federal Trade Commission reported that Louisiana consumers lost more than $101 million to fraud and scams in 2025. Chase Bank vice president and community manager Diana Holmes organized the session to address this rising risk.

Holmes told attendees that the senior population faces the highest level of vulnerability to these schemes. She advised participants to keep their digital devices updated and to remove apps and accounts they no longer use. Holmes also warned against sharing sensitive financial data with public artificial intelligence tools or unverified applications.

Chase relationship banker Christopher Gallardo Jr. said he assists customers with fraud issues at least once or twice a day. He noted that while some clients recover part of their funds, others do not. "At least once or twice a day, I help a client. I've seen both times where a client has been able to get some of the funds back, but sometimes they're unlucky," Gallardo said.

New Orleans resident Nita Jefferson attended the workshop to learn how to handle unwanted calls. She described a strategy for dealing with potential scammers on the phone. "When I get a phone call and I know it's a scammer, I give him a police number to call, and that helps me a lot for them not to call me anymore," Jefferson said.

New Orleans Police Department Capt. Jennifer Dupree emphasized that consumers do not need to engage with unknown callers. "You don't have to, you don't have to engage. If you do get a phone call from somebody, call them back and verify. If it's an unknown number, verify that number," Dupree said.

Holmes stressed the importance of enabling multifactor authentication to secure online accounts. She explained that while recovering money from scams is uncertain, two-factor authentication confirms the identity of the person accessing an account. "With scams, it's a high likely percentage that you may or may not recover that money, but a fraud, that's where the two-factor authentication ensures that it's truly you," Holmes said.