San Ramon Students Launch Senior Scam Initiative

San Ramon students have started a scam-awareness campaign for older residents, turning fraud prevention into a student-led community project. (patch.com) The effort is called Project Cybershield, and Patch reported it has led workshops and outreach events focused on helping seniors recognize phone and internet scams. The group also recently spoke at a Future Business Leaders of America conference to extend the program beyond San Ramon. (patch.com) A related Patch profile published on February 4, 2026, identified Dougherty Valley High School student Adya Gupta as a local organizer of free workshops on internet safety, digital literacy, artificial intelligence and coding for students and seniors. An earlier Patch report from April 14, 2025, said Gupta and her group Impactt Kids were already running senior trainings on phone and internet scams in San Ramon. (patch.com 1) (patch.com 2) The timing tracks with a broader fraud problem affecting older Americans. The Federal Trade Commission said in its December 2025 report that adults ages 60 and older reported $2.3 billion in fraud losses in 2024, with investment scams producing the highest reported losses. (ftc.gov) The Federal Trade Commission also said older adults were less likely than younger adults to report losing money to fraud, but when they did, the median loss was higher for several payment methods, including bank transfers and cryptocurrency. That helps explain why local workshops often focus on slowing down payments, checking who is calling, and avoiding urgent requests. (ftc.gov) Federal investigators have been tracking the same pattern. The Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, lists separate elder-fraud reports in its annual archive, and the Justice Department’s 2025 elder justice report said the highest reported losses for older adults in the FBI’s 2024 data came from investment scams, business email compromise and tech-support fraud. (ic3.gov) (justice.gov) In San Ramon, the student campaign appears to be built around in-person teaching rather than just online posts. A public presentation deck tied to Project Cybershield describes workshop modules on phishing, the “grandparent scam,” password security and suspicious emails, and says the team planned bilingual workshops and a “program in a box” to make the material easier to reuse. (prezi.com) Future Business Leaders of America conferences give student groups a ready-made audience for that kind of pitch. FBLA says its conferences are designed for students to connect, compete and develop business leadership skills, which helps explain why a local anti-scam project would use that stage to recruit support and spread the model. (fbla.org) (californiafbla.org) The San Ramon project lands on a simple idea: students who grew up online are teaching older neighbors how to spot digital traps before money leaves an account. For now, the public record shows the campaign moving through workshops, conference presentations and local outreach rather than law enforcement or fundraising. (patch.com)