Scams, identity theft and cybercrimes threaten everyone.
Every year people lose billions of dollars to scams, identity theft and cybercrime. No one is immune to these dangers. Young and old alike are victims and if you think you are too smart to become a victim, you are wrong. According to the National Association of Securities Dealers wealthy, financially literate and astute people are actually more likely to become victims of financial scams.
The key to protecting yourself from scams cybercrime and identity theft is education and that is where Scamicide.com comes in. Here at Scamicide.com you will learn how to recognize scams, cyber security threats and risks of identity theft as well as how to avoid them. Here at Scamicide.com we also alert you each and every day to the latest developments in scams, cyber security and identity theft and tell you what you need to do to protect yourself. It is a dangerous world out there, but Scamicide.com can help you make it safer.
Scam of the day – March 16, 2026 – New Imposter Scam Targets Building Permits: How Criminals Exploit City and County Records
Imposter scams have long been among the most lucrative for scammers. While there are many variations of this scam, the most common variations have involved scammers emailing their victims posing as a popular company with which we all do business or calling their intended victims on the telephone posing as some governmental agency such as the IRS or the Social Security Administration. The scammer then, under a wide variety of pretenses, demands an immediate payment by gift cards, credit card, cryptocurrency or wired funds. Being asked to pay by gift cards or cryptocurrency is a definite indication that the call is a scam since no company or governmental agency requests or accepts payments by gift cards or cryptocurrency.
The FBI recently issued a warning about a new version of the imposter scam in which the scammers are sending emails to businesses and individuals applying for city and county building and zoning permits in which the scammers impersonate city or county planning officials or zoning officials. The emails instruct the targeted victims to send payments for permit-required fees through wire transfers, peer to peer payment apps such as Zelle or Venmo of cryptocurrencies. The emails are very convincing. The scammers target people with pending permits and use the actual case numbers, property addresses and other information of real pending permit applications to appear legitimate. All of this information is readily available online, but it can make the email appear to be trustworthy.
TIPS
Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Whenever you get an email in which a payment is requested you should always independently confirm that it is legitimate before making a payment. In the case of this scam, the first thing to do is to carefully check the email address of the sender. Often the email address is part of a botnet of compromised computers used to send out these emails and the address of the sender doesn’t resemble that of a local or county government email address. In other instances, the email may appear at first blush to be legitimate so even in those instances, you should always confirm with a phone call to the real zoning or building department as to the legitimacy of the email.
The biggest indication that this is a scam is in the method of payment requested. Only scammers demand immediate payment by gift cards, cryptocurrency or peer to peer payment apps. Scammers love these methods of payment because they are the easiest to hide and payments can’t effectively be stopped once initiated.
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