As regular readers of Scamicide are aware, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is the primary federal agency which protects consumers from scams, is sometimes able to obtain payments from scammers convicted in court following FTC lawsuits or, more commonly, after they settle their cases with the FTC.  Last year, the FTC succeeded in retrieving  483 million dollars from scammers which was returned to 1.7 million scam victims.  The biggest amount of this money last year came from Western Union which paid 300 million dollars to the FTC to settle claims brought against it by the FTC.  Generally the FTC gets the names and contact information of scam victims who are due refunds through the customer lists and contact information maintained by the convicted or settling scammers and you do not need to apply for a refund.  However, in other instances, it is necessary to apply for a scam refund.  Information about scam refunds, your eligibility to receive a payment and details of how and if you need to apply for a refund can be obtained by clicking on the tab on the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website which reads “FTC Scam Refunds.”  Whenever the FTC initiates a scam refund for a particular scam, I will let you know about it here as a Scam of the day on http://www.scamicide.com.  Last year the FTC did scam refunds in 50 cases.

TIPS

It is very important to remember that there never is a charge or a fee to pay in order to be eligible for these refunds.  Anyone who contacts you about an FTC refund and either asks for a payment or personal information such as your Social Security number, your credit card number or bank account number is another scammer seeking to take advantage of you.  The best place to find out exactly what you need to do to obtain a refund is at the “FTC Scam Refunds” tab on the first page of http://www.scamicide.com.

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide has been cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

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