Reports of a new scam targeting diabetics on Medicare is, in one way, just another ho-hum story about another group of cons that no one will pursue no matter how much money they manage to steal.

This scam involves people claiming to be with Medicare, Med-Care or Medco, calling senior citizens. Somehow, the scammers have learned the medical conditions of the people they call, and they know who their doctors are, and their doctors’ phone numbers and addresses. Then they ask for the numbers on their target’s Medicare card and for their mother’s maiden name.

The alarm about the ongoing scam was put out last week by the Indiana Association of Area Agencies on Aging.

Tamra Simpson, a spokeswoman for that organization, said that her office is getting dozens of calls daily from seniors receiving suspicious calls. The number of complaints, though, is probably a small percentage of people whom the con artists have contacted, she said. Remember that people in all 50 states have been targets, so the number could be huge.

How the scam will play out isn’t clear. Sometimes the number on a person’s Medicare card is the same as the person’s Social Security number.

Armed with that, a con artist can get credit cards in their victims’ names.

At the very least, it appears the con artists could be trying to file bogus Medicare claims or buy medical equipment in someone else’s name, with the bill paid by Medicare.

“It’s been happening all over the U.S.” said Maureen Widner, of Aging and In-Home Services of Northeast Indiana.

Seniors have been advised that Medicare officials know their Medicare numbers already so they aren’t going to call and ask what it is. In fact, Medicare would never try to call you at all.

Widner and Simpson said Medicare recipients who might have fallen for the scam should check the Medicare summaries they receive every month and look for charges they haven’t authorized. Those charges could then be headed off before they are paid.

While it seems that it wouldn’t harm people if a scammer billed Medicare for equipment in their name, it could come back to haunt them if they later need the same piece of equipment. Medicare could refuse to pay for it on the basis that it already purchased one for the patient.

No one seems to be concerned about how these scammers got all this information on Medicare recipients, and the way people have been told to respond strikes me as loss prevention as much as anything else.

People who have been duped into giving out their Medicare or Social Security number are being told to call the Senior Medicare Patrol at 1-317-205-9201, and Medicare can flag their accounts. Or they can report possible identity theft to the attorney general’s office by calling 1-800-382-5516, or by calling the Social Security Administration at 1-800-269-0271.

One suggestion is even to call the Federal Trade Commission and report a violation if you are on the national do-not-call registry. That to me is almost laughable. Someone just tried to scam you and you’re supposed to report a violation of the do-not-call registry?

These days almost everyone has caller ID. Targets of these scams have a record of the numbers the calls came from. But no one seems to be trying to track down the scammers.

I can’t help but wonder why. Is it not illegal to try to scam someone on the phone? Or do we just not know how to find them? I’d like to know.