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 cryptocurrencies, gift cards, credit card or wired funds. Being asked to pay by gift cards or cryptocurrencies is a definite indication that the call is a scam since no company or governmental agency requests or accepts payments by gift cards or cryptocurrencies.

The Newark office of the FBI issued a warning about scammers posting as FBI, DEA and Secret Service agents calling their targeted victims and under a variety of pretenses including, but not limited to, missing federal jury duty, having an outstanding arrest warrant or that their identity has been used to traffic in illegal drugs convince the targeted victim that they need to move their money through crypto ATMs to a “safe” account provided by the FBI or by git card or wiring money to the scammers to resolve the problem.  Making the problem worse is that through spoofing of phone numbers, the call received by the scam victim appears to be that of the FBI.  The scammers also use the names of real FBI agents and some have even had Zoom meetings where it appears that scammer is calling from FBI headquarters.

TIPS

As I have often reminded you, whenever you are contacted by phone call, email or a text message you can never be sure who is actually contacting you.  B.S.  Be skeptical. Through the simple technique of “spoofing” it is very easy for a scammer to manipulate your Caller ID to make a call coming to you appear legitimate when it is not.  Therefore you can never truly trust your Caller ID.  Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.  Email addresses can also be made to appear legitimate as can text messages when they are actually coming from a scammer.

Never click on a link, download an attachment, provide personal information or make a payment in response to an email, text message or phone call unless you have absolutely confirmed that the communication is legitimate.

As for this particular scam, it is important to remember that the FBI will never demand payment through gift cards, cryptocurrencies, wire transfers or cash deposits at cryptocurrency ATMs or ask people to move money to safe accounts.

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