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 calling, texting or emailing their victims posing as a popular company with which we all do business or  posing as some governmental agency such as the FBI, IRS or the Social Security Administration.  The scammer then, under a wide variety of pretenses, demands an immediate payment by gift cards, credit card or wired funds. Being asked to pay by gift cards is a definite indication that the call is a scam since no company or governmental agency requests or accepts payments by gift cards.

Recently many of the imposter scams involve the scammer posing as an FBI agent contacting the targeted victim and telling them that their identity had been used in perpetrating a crime, such as drug arrests in Texas or a cyberattack on the FBI’s office in Sacramento, California which are two of the supposed crimes used by scammers in recent scams.  The phony FBI agent then tells the targeted victim that his or her assets will shortly be frozen and that they should liquidate their assets and send them to the phony FBI agent for safekeeping.

Now in a frightening new development in this scam, the scammers are sending accomplices to the homes of their targeted victims to  actually pick up the money in person.  Recently in Oregon, the FBI arrested Ramaraj Ganesan who they say was attempting to pick up funds from a targeted victim who had recognized the scam and alerted authorities.  In his car when he was arrested were gold bars worth $85,000 obtained from a similar scam victim.  According to court filings, Ganesan admitted doing similar pickups in South Carolina, Florida, Utah and Washington.  Millions are lost to these scams each year and many of the scams are done by cybercriminal groups outside of the United States who use people like Ganesan as “money mules” to pick up the funds directly from their victims.

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.

Finally and most importantly, no law enforcement agency will ever tell you to liquidate your assets and turn them over to the law enforcement agent for safekeeping.  That is always a scam.

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