Of the 1.4 million fraud reports in 2018, 25% of those victims claimed they lost money to scammers to a tune of $1.48 billion! How are folks typically getting taken advantage of? The three leaders are identity theft, debt collection and imposter scams. Imposter scams entail, for example, someone pretending to be from the government (IRS) or tech support to fix your computer or emergency personnel. They are trying to scare you into sending money or else something bad is going to happen.
It has been common practice for these scammers to ask for funds to be wired, but the latest trends are to have victims put money on gift cards or “reload” existing money cards. The bigger surprise is that many younger folks (a whopping 43% in the 20’s age bracket) are falling victim to these crimes more than the older folks in their 70’s (only 15%). So they diffidently don’t just target the elderly.
Follow link to read full article by Paul Witt, Supervisory Data Analyst, Federal Trade Commission (2/28/2019), “The Top Fraud of 2018”.
