Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – November 7, 2026 – Veterans Day Scams
In a few days we will be celebrating Veterans Day, a day we set aside to honor those who have served our country and to whom all Americans owe a debt of gratitude. However, for scam artists, Veterans Day is just another opportunity to take advantage of the best intentions of people and steal their money. In 2020, the Senate Committee on Aging held hearings in which they inquired about scams targeting veterans and members of the military. One witness testified at the hearing that veterans are twice as likely to be scammed than the general population.
Among the scams targeting all of us at this time of year are phony telephone calls that purport to be from various veterans organizations or charities seeking donations when, in fact, many of these calls will be from scammers seeking to steal money under false pretenses.
Another scam related to Veterans’ Day involves veterans receiving telephone calls purporting to be from the Veterans’ Administration asking for personal information necessary to verify or update the information of the VA. Of course, the call is not from the VA and the request for personal information is intended merely to gather such information in order to make the veteran a victim of identity theft.
Following the passage of the PACT Act in 2022 which expanded VA benefits and health care for veterans who were exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances, there have been numerous companies and lawyers offering assistance in filing for benefits for conditions related to such toxic exposures in return for a percentage of your benefit award. However, you don’t need to pay to file a claim. The VA can assist you or help you identify a VA-recognized organization or VA-accredited individual to help you with your claim. You can submit your application securely online via VA.gov. There is no cost for the forms and no fee to apply. VA will never charge you to apply for benefits. In addition, Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) and representatives are available to assist in filing claims. To help guard against fraud and scams, validate the credentials of anyone offering to help you with a VA claim by using the Office of General Counsel’s Accreditation Search tool or by contacting your local representative or VA Regional Office
TIPS
Even if you are on the federal Do Not Call List, which is a good thing to be on if you wish to avoid telemarketers, you are legally able to be called by charities. The problem is that whenever you receive a call purporting to be from a charity, you have absolutely no way of knowing if you are being contacted by a legitimate charity. Using a technique called “spoofing,” scammers can manipulate your Caller ID to make it appear that their calls are coming from legitimate sources such as charities. You also cannot know, without doing some research, whether the particular veterans’ charity that may be contacting you is legitimate or not.
As I often advise you, never give personal information such as credit card information to anyone over the phone if you have not made the call. If you are considering a gift to a particular charity, first check out the charity with http://www.charitynavigator.org to make sure that the charity is legitimate and also find out how much of the charitable donations they receive actually goes toward helping veterans and how much goes toward salaries and operating expenses of the charities. A good rule of thumb is to not give to charities that take more than 25% of what they collect for their own salaries and expenses. If after vetting a particular charity, you decide that you would like to make a donation, you can get the information from charitynavigator.org as to how to make your gift.
As for calls that you may receive purporting to be from the VA or any other governmental agency requesting information, you should never provide information over the phone to anyone because, as I indicated above, you can never be sure if the caller is who he or she says they are. In this case, you should contact the particular agency at a telephone number that you know is accurate to confirm whether or not the request for personal information was legitimate or not. Most of the time, the call will turn out to be a scam.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”
Scam of the day – November 6, 2026 – Seasonal Job Scams
Phony advertisements for non-existent jobs that lure people into either giving the scammer money or personal information that can be used for purposes of identity theft have been a common scam for many years, but particularly during the holiday season when many companies are looking for seasonal workers, the scam gets worse. Scammers use ads on job sites, social media, newspapers and even television and radio, the same platforms used by legitimate employers to attract their victims. Sometimes the scammers use the names of legitimate companies and sometimes they make up phony companies just for the purpose of offering phony jobs through these companies.
According to the FBI, which has warned about the increasing frequency of job scams, the scammers often first set up a phony website that appears to be that of a legitimate company with which you might be familiar. They then post the phony job opportunity on legitimate job sites and direct the job applicants to the phony website These scammers will do interviews of prospective employees in much the same way that real companies do to make their scam appear legitimate, however, unlike legitimate job interviews, the interviews done by scammers are generally relatively short and don’t require repeated interviews before the targeted victim of the scam gets “hired.” At that point, the scammer then requests personal information such as your Social Security number which a legitimate employer would also do which is one reason this scam is so dangerous. They also may ask for money or your credit card number to pay for background investigations or equipment for the company which legitimate businesses do not do.
TIPS
Although LinkedIn, Indeed and other websites that carry job postings try to identify and either prevent or remove phony ads from appearing on their websites, you cannot depend on these companies to fully protect you. Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Certainly a little skepticism helps when you see a job posting for a job that sounds too good to be true. Ads that ask for you to pay upfront costs for any reason should be considered to be a scam as well as any company that requests your credit card information for any reason whatsoever.
To check on the legitimacy of photographs in these ads you can do a reverse image search using Google or websites such as tineye.com. You can also check to see if the wording of the advertisement has been used elsewhere by merely copying a substantial amount of the text into your search engine and see what comes up. Also, research the company itself to determine if it is a legitimate company. Check out the website of the company supposedly offering you a job to see if the legitimate company is offering such a job. Make sure you are using a domain name that you have confirmed is legitimate and not just the one contained in the email sent to you by the scammer. If the job doesn’t appear on the real company’s website, you know it is a scam. It also is a good idea to confirm any job offer you might receive with the HR department of the real company before providing personal information such as your Social Security number.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
Scam of the day – November 5, 2026 – Beware of Evil Twins
Whether we are at the airport, a hotel, a shopping mall, a coffee shop or almost anywhere else, you will usually find free public Wi-Fi service offered so that we can use our cell phones, laptops or tablets to connect to the Internet. However with this convenience can come danger. Too many people assume that the Wi-Fi that they are using is secure and this is not always the case. In fact, often an identity thief will go to the same coffee shop or other venue and set up his or her own Wi-Fi which is what you may unwittingly be tapping into when you think you are connecting to the Wi-Fi of the particular coffee shop or other place you find yourself at. Technologically, it is easy to set up a phony Wi-Fi that can steal data from your cell phone, laptop or tablet and use that information to make you a victim of identity theft. Scammer created phony Wi-Fi networks which are often called “Evil twins.”
So what can you do to make using public Wi-Fi safe?
TIPS
It is always a good idea to make sure that your cell phone, tablet or laptop has a good firewall and is protected by anti-virus and anti-malware security software that is updated with the latest security updates. It is also a good idea not to use public Wi-Fi for banking or other financial transactions or, for that matter, anything that requires you to provide login credentials. Sensitive data should not be sent over public Wi-Fi. If you are going to use public Wi-Fi, the first thing you should do is check the hotspot name. Identity thieves often set up their phony Wi-Fi with names that appear quite similar to the legitimate Wi-Fi. For example, the public Wi-Fi offered at your coffee shop may be named GoodCoffee while the phony one may be something that with a cursory look appears legitimate, such as Go0dCoffee.
Always make sure when using public Wi-Fi that you are on the legitimate Wi-Fi site before proceeding to use it. Many cell phones and other devices automatically connect to nearby networks, which can connect you to the identity thief’s phony Wi-Fi before you realize it. Therefore disable automatic connection to networks. Finally, the best thing you can do to protect your privacy and security when using public Wi-fi is to use a Virtual Private Network app which will encrypt all of your data before sending it through the Wi-Fi connection. Here is a link to an article about VPNs that will tell you all you need to know (and possibly more) about VPNs. https://au.norton.com/internetsecurity-wifi-how-does-a-vpn-work.html and here is a link to an article that lists ten good VPNs that you can get for free. https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-free-vpn
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
Scam of the day – November 4, 2026 – Maryland Police Issue Warning About Bank Imposter Scam
The Anne Arundel County Maryland Police Department has issued a warning about scammers posing as bank fraud department employees calling their targeted victims and using psychology skills that Freud would have envied convince their victims that their debit card or bank account has been attempted to be accessed by criminals and that in order to protect their money they must go the bank immediately and withdraw their entire account in cash and give it to a rideshare driver who will come to their home to pick up the cash and deposit it into a safe account for the victim.
The call appears legitimate because the scam victim’s Caller ID indicates that the call is coming from their bank, however, it is a simple matter for a scammer to “spoof” the phone number of the bank and manipulate the scam victim’s Caller ID to make the call appear legitimate.
TIPS
Whenever you get a phone call, text message or email asking you for personal information, to make a payment or withdraw funds you can never be sure who is actually calling you. B.S. Be skeptical. If you have any thought that the communication might be legitimate, call the bank at a phone number you know to be accurate where you can confirm that the call is a scam.
No bank will ever ask you to withdraw your money and turn it over to someone to protect it. No bank will ever ask you to cash in your bank account and give it to anyone. In other variations of this scam, victims are instructed to take their cash to a cryptocurrency ATM and deposit it into a safe account provided by the scammer. This too is always a scam.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
Scam of the day – November 3, 2026 – At Home Job Could Be Money Laundering
Laundering money derived from a scam is an essential element of many scams. Scammers can be extremely clever at distancing themselves from their scams in order to avoid detection. The people they enlist either as willing or unknowing participants in the laundering of the proceeds of a scam are called money mules. Scams in which innocent people are lured into being unknowing money mules are numerous. One of the more common of these involves work at home scams where your job is to receive goods, often electronics that have been shipped to you, inspect them and then reship them to an address provided to you by your new employer.
The problem is that these goods have been purchased with stolen credit cards and you have just become an accomplice to the crime when you ship them to someone else who will then sell them to turn the merchandise into cash. Other times the scammers will say that your job is to receive funds sent to you by the scammer, deposit the funds in your own bank account and wire the funds to people who the scammers tell you are either clients or suppliers of the scammers’ phony company. Finally, money mules are also used is in a variation of the romance scam where you are asked by your romantic partner to wire funds to someone on behalf of the scammer under a variety of pretenses.
Many times the scammers will use the names of legitimate businesses when attempting to lure people into the reshipping scam.
TIP
As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Check out work at home scams with the big two – your local attorney general and the FTC. And, as always, you can Google the name of the particular company offering you the work at home program with the word “scam” next to it and see what turns up.
As for reshipping goods as a work at home job, it is important to remember that there are no such legal jobs for reshippers. They are always a scam and you should steer clear of them. You also should never use your own bank account to transfer funds for an employer. Finally, you should always be skeptical of someone with whom you have recently established an online romantic relationship who either asks you for money (the most common scam) or asks you to pass on money to a third party as directed by the scammer.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
Scam of the day – November 2, 2026 – Customer Service Number Scams
Since 2017 I have been warning you about scammers planting phony customer service numbers online and using those numbers to trick their victims into providing personal information or paying them money. Scammers construct phony websites that appear to provide a telephone number for customer service or tech support of many of the companies with which we do business. Often the scammers either purchase an ad to appear at the top of a search engine search or they manipulate the algorithms used by Google and other search engines to make their phony customer service number appear high on a search. Through the use of AI, these phony websites look very believable.
Now scammers are manipulating AI to have their phony customer service numbers appear in Google’s AI Overviews and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. People unfortunately believe that AI is totally trustworthy and call those numbers only to be scammed. AI harvests its information from the Internet and savvy scammers will insert their phony customer service number on online review sites, message boards and numerous websites. The more places the phony numbers appear, the more likely AI will pick them up and suggest them to you when you do an AI search.
TIPS
The best place to look for a telephone number for customer support or tech support is right on your bill or the legitimate website of the company. Even when you do call legitimate tech support or customer service telephone numbers take extra care to make sure that you are dialing correctly and not calling a clever scammer who may have purchased a telephone number that is a digit off of the correct phone number in an attempt to ensnare people who may misdial the number.
Also, remember you can’t trust Alexa or Siri to provide you with the correct number because they only access the information appearing at the top of a search engine search. As I indicated earlier, often those numbers are fake numbers put their by scammers.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
Scam of the day – November 1, 2026 – Phony Coupon Scam
Everyone loves coupons and like many things in our lives, coupons which used to be found commonly in newspapers and magazines have migrated online. In recent years scammers have been perpetrating phony coupon scams on social media. Among the companies affected by these phony coupons were Bath and Body Works, Costco, Aldi, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s. As I have warned you many times in the past, Facebook has become a hotbed for phony online coupons. The phony coupons looks quite legitimate which means nothing because it is very easy to copy the company logos and make the coupons appear to be genuine.
The way that many phony coupon scams work is that in order to qualify for the coupon, you must complete a survey in which you are required to provide much personal information that is used to make you a victim of identity theft. In other versions of the scam, the scammer actually asks for your credit card numbers. In yet another version of the scam you are required to buy many costly items in order to claim your “free” coupon. Many of the coupon scams also require you to forward the coupon to friends which make the phony coupons appear more trustworthy when they are received by your friends. Ultimately, in all of these scams, the coupons are worthless and you get nothing but the opportunity to become a victim of identity theft. Here is a copy of a phony coupon appearing online. It was provided by the Identity Theft Resource Center.
TIPS
If the coupon appears too good to be true, it usually is a scam. No company could cover the cost of giving away vast numbers of $75 coupons although sometimes, participants in legitimate surveys are promised a chance to win a prize in a drawing. Facebook is a favorite venue for scammers perpetrating this type of scam because often unwary victims will unwittingly share the scam with their friends. One way to determine if a coupon is legitimate is to look for the expiration date found on most coupons. The phony Costco coupon shown above like most phony coupons does not carry an expiration date. The best place to go to find out if a coupon is legitimate is to go to the company’s website to see what real coupons are being offered.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”
Scam of the day – October 31, 2026 – Nigerian Email From Canada
We are all familiar with the infamous Nigerian email scam in which you are promised great sums of money if you assist a Nigerian in his effort to transfer money out of his country. Variations of this scam include the movement of embezzled funds by corrupt officials, a dying gentleman who wants to make charitable gifts or a minor bank official trying to move the money of deceased foreigners out of his bank without the government taking it. A common element in all of the versions of this scam is that although you are told initially that you do not need to contribute anything financially to the endeavor, you soon learn that it is necessary for you to contribute continuing large amounts of money for various reasons, such as fees, bribes, insurance or taxes before you can get anything. Of course, the victim ends up paying money to the scammer, but never receives anything in return.
I recently received the following email purportedly from a Canadian lawyer who lists his name oddly as Barr.Gilbert Howard offering me funds from an estate.
“Good day, My name is Barr. Gilbert Howard, I am a solicitor with Gilbert Howard Law office, Ontario, Canada. There is an unclaimed “Payable-on-Death” (“POD”) held by our deceased client. The policy holder was one of our clients, the late Mr. Rolf Klostermann, who secured this Life Insurance through us, but unfortunately died in a fatal accident here in Ontario, Canada about 12 years ago. Since his death all our efforts to locate his relatives have proved unsuccessful. However, the Insurance Policy contract stipulates that “Payable-on-Death” (“POD”) not claimed must be turned over to the abandoned property division of the state after 12 years, hence the reason I am contacting you. I am convinced that you are a trustworthy and reliable person to take care of a project of this volume (US$9,820,000). please respond to me for further details via email: barrgilberthoward@gmail.com Your earliest response to this matter would be highly appreciated. Have a pleasant day. Barr. Gilbert Howard (ESQ) Gilbert Howard Law office”
TIPS
This version of the Nigerian email scam is a bit more sophisticated than the usual version that still circulates on the Internet. The story is not so outrageously ridiculous as is commonly found in the more common versions of this scam. However, the common thread of something for nothing still appears in the scam and should make you immediately skeptical. In this case a little research will show that there is no lawyer in Canada named Barr.Gilbert Howard. This particular email scam has actually been circulating since 2024.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address in the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”
Scam of the day – October 30, 2026 – Another Geek Squad Phishing Scam
It has only been a month since I last warned you about Geek Squad phony invoice phishing scams, but this one particularly caught my attention due to the lazy scammer who directed the email to “paid customer” instead of a name. According to the FTC, the company most impersonated by scammers with phishing emails containing fake bills or fake renewals is Geek Squad. Geek Squad is a subsidiary of big box store chain Best Buy and it offers excellent tech support for electronic devices including televisions and computers. Scammers have been sending phishing emails that appear to be Geek Squad invoices. Reproduced below is one of those imposter phishing emails presently circulating. It looks like a legitimate email from Geek Squad. This email is intended to get you to respond by calling the phone number contained in the email to dispute the bill. If you do call the number you will be prompted to provide personal information that would be used to make you a victim of identity theft.
Here is the email that is presently circulating:
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
TIPS
Never click on links or download attachments in emails or text messages unless you have absolutely confirmed that they are legitimate and don’t call companies at telephone numbers that appear in the email such as this one. Instead, if the email appears to come from a legitimate company, you can call them at a telephone number you confirm is legitimate. In the case of Geek Squad their customer service number is actually 800-433-5778. The phone number in the email is not that of the Geek Squad and the area code is that of Florida. Never call the number that appears in these types of emails.
An indication that this is not legitimate and is a phishing email is the fact that nowhere in the email does your name appear nor did the email address of the sender have any relation to Geek Squad.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
Scam of the day – October 29, 2026 – Bank Debit Card Imposter Scam
For years identity thieves and scammers would use skimmers installed at ATMs and on card processing equipment such as at gas pumps (where this is still a problem) and at retail checkouts to steal the debit or credit card information from the magnetic strip on the card and then use it to access the victim’s account. The development of the chip credit card where a computer chip is contained on the card which provides a new number each time the card is used dramatically reduced the amount of credit and debit card theft with the exception of online purchases where the chip cannot be used (well, nobody’s perfect). Now however, clever criminals have come up with a new way to access your bank account through your debit card.
The scam starts when you get a phone call that appears to come from your bank informing you that there has been fraudulent activity on your debit card. Using a technique called “spoofing” the scammers are able to manipulate your Caller ID so that it indicates that your bank is calling you. The scammer then goes on to tell you that you need to cut up your card, but keep the chip from the card to be picked up by a bank employee. The phony bank employee then shows up to pick up the chip and using social engineering lures the victim into providing his or her PIN.
Once the scammer has your PIN and the chip, he or she can create a debit card and go to any ATM and empty your bank account.
TIPS
Whenever you get a phone call, you can never be sure who is actually calling you. If you get a call that purports to be from your bank informing you of some problem, you should hang up and call your bank at a telephone number that you know is accurate to determine if the call was a scam. You also can go online to your bank account to determine that no fraudulent access had occurred.
In addition, no bank will ever ask you to give them back the chip on your credit card or ask for your PIN.
B.S. Be skeptical!
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/