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 or personal information that can lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft.

Recently the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning about scammers posing as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contacting veterans and telling them that they owe money due to an overpayment of benefits.  The emails and letters used by the scammers often appear to be legitiamte with official seals and logos, but these are easy to counterfeit.

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.

If you are contacted by someone indicating money is owed to the government for overpayment of VA benefits, the first place to look is your VA gov account .https://www.va.gov/manage-va-debt/  Here you can check the status of your account and if you do indeed owe anything you can call the VA’s debt management call center at 1-800-827-0648.  If you need assistance filing a claim or reviewing a VA decision, you can get a VA accredited representative to help you at no cost. https://www.va.gov/get-help-from-accredited-representative/find-rep/

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