Scammers are targeting veterans at alarming rate. How to protect the vet in your life.

They put their lives on the line to fight for our freedoms, but after surviving the front lines of war, many veterans are losing a personal battle that is costing them dearly.

Nearly nine in 10 servicemembers and veterans have been targeted by a military service-related scam in just the past twelve months, according to data from AARP.

In the past five years, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data shows scammers have taken a whopping $1.4 billion from our veterans.

One Southern California sister is devastated after scammers drained her brother's bank account.

"I would just like to see these people caught," she told 7 On Your Side Investigates.

The woman didn't want her name revealed because she's terrified of the scammers who bilked her brother out of his Veterans Administration (VA) disability payments.

She also asked Eyewitness News not to report his name.

"One of the guys threatening him, he got my phone number and called me and threatened me," she said. "He told me he was gonna kill my little brother if I didn't pay."

Right now, her brother is in the hospital after suffering a series of mini-strokes, but the story really starts after he came home from Operation Desert Storm.

She says her brother never addressed his PTSD and has felt chronically lonely since returning to L.A. and civilian life.

She says somehow, a scammer first convinced him to hand over money several years ago, and it has spiraled ever since.

"I personally think he got involved with one scam on the internet, and then when those scammers were done with them, they just handed him off to somebody else," his sister said.

Even while her brother is in a hospital bed, he's receiving dozens of scam calls.

One of the con jobs that cost him came from a celebrity impersonator.

"The other scammer is pretending to be Pink, the entertainer, and she is saying that her daughter -- that he's her father, and the little girl calls him daddy," the woman said.

This sister says a series of scams over the last five years has cost her brother over $300,000.

Dan Clare with Disabled American Veterans says vets need to be hyper vigilant because scammers specifically target them for their government benefits.

"You need to, kind of, sadly, assume that the people you are talking to, unless you know them very well, unless you are hearing their voice or seeing them in person, you kind of have to assume they could be a scammer," Clare said. "Veterans are 40% more likely to lose money as a result of these scams."

The sister says she has been able to stop both her brother's VA disability and social security payments, so at least that is now protected from scammers.

7 On Your Side Investigates reached out to the VA for this story.

This is such a huge problem, they created a VA Fraud Prevention Kit to help veterans learn how to identify and prevent fraud.