Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – September 29, 2026 – The Danger of Homograph Attacks
Chances are you haven’t heard of the term, “homograph attack,” but it refers to a cyberthreat that can easily result in your becoming a victim of identity theft or a scam victim. A homograph attack is a type of cyber attack where attackers exploit look alike characters, often from different alphabets to create misleading domain names, usernames, or URLs that appear legitimate but actually lead to malicious sites. Homograph attacks have been around since the early 2000s, but have increased dramatically since 2020 when the federal government first warned about them. The attack starts with an email from what appears to be a legitimate source such as your bank informing you of an emergency requiring you to either click on a link or provide personal information.
Homograph attacks exploit similarities between the Roman alphabet used in the English language and the Cyrillic alphabet developed for Slavic speaking people which is used in more than 50 languages including Russian. In the example below in the real email address the Roman “a” is used while in the second phony email address the Cyrillic version is used which is easy to miss. Similarly without even changing the alphabet, some scammers will replace a lowercase L “l” with the number “1” which can also be easily missed.
Recently scammers have been sending phishing emails posing as Microsoft and using the email address rnicrosoft.com which at first glance appears legitimate, but instead of the letter “m” at the start of the email address it uses the letters “r” and “n” which give the appearance of an “m.”
TIPS
Remember my motto, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” You have to be skeptical whenever you receive an email or text message asking for personal information or requesting you to click on a link because you can never be sure if the communication is legitimate or not at initial viewing. Always absolutely confirm whether the communication is legitimate before ever providing personal information or clicking on a link that could contain harmful malware. Phishing emails will always make it appear that there is an emergency to which you must respond immediately, but it is important to take your time to make sure that the communication is legitimate before responding.
Also, don’t rely on your security software to totally protect you because while it is critical to have good security software on all of your devices and to keep it up to date with the latest updates, the most updated security software will not protect you from malware that exploits zero day defects which are software vulnerabilities not yet discovered. It generally takes the security software companies about a month before to come up with defenses against the latest strains of malware.
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Scam of the day – September 28, 2026 – Hurricane Charity Scams
Natural disasters such as hurricanes are common occurrences. Hurricane season runs this year from June 1st until November 30th. Hurricanes often cause tremendous damage and loss of property. They also bring out the best in people who want to donate to charities to help the victims. Unfortunately natural disasters also bring out the worst in scammers who are quick to take advantage of the generosity of people by contacting them posing as charities, but instead of collecting funds to help the victims of these natural disasters, these scam artists steal the money for themselves under false pretenses. Making matters even worse, scammers will use information from data brokers and public sources to identify people who are likely to be susceptible to solicitations of donations to charities providing help to hurricane victims. Scammers also contact people through social media with pleas for charitable donations with the ads specifically targeting likely victims through the use of the algorithms used by social media. Often these social media posts will contain AI enhanced photos and videos and you can never be sure if the posts are legitimate.
Charities are not subject to the federal Do Not Call List so even if you are signed up for the federal Do Not Call List, legitimate charities are able to contact you by phone. The problem is that whenever you get a phone call, you can never be sure as to who is really calling you so you may be contacted either by a fake charity or a scammer posing as a legitimate charity. Using a technique called spoofing, the scammers can manipulate your Caller ID to make it appear that the call is coming from a legitimate charity when it is not. Similarly, when you are solicited for a charitable contribution by email, social media or text message you cannot be sure as to whether the person contacting you is legitimate or not.
TIPS
Never provide credit card information over the phone to anyone whom you have not called or in response to an email or text message. Before you give to any charity, you may wish to check out the charity with http://www.charitynavigator.org where you can learn whether or not the charity itself is a scam.
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Scam of the day – September 27, 2026 – Scammers Targeting Recent Widows and Widowers
Scammers have no sympathy for anyone as evidenced by the many scams that are based on obituaries. For years, scammers would scan the obituaries and then go to Social Security’s Death Master File where the names of deceased Americans are available along with their Social Security numbers and then use this information to the deceased a victim of identity theft by obtaining credit, filing phony income tax returns or other tactics. Easy access by scammers to the Death Master File has been largely closed by legislation.
Scammers also will look for information in obituaries about the names of family members and then use that information for purposes of the infamous Grandparent Scam where the grandparent gets a telephone call late at night from a scammer posing as the grandchild who under the guise of some emergency tricks the grandparent into sending money to the scammer.
Recently we have started seeing scammers utilizing AI to harvest obituaries for likely targets and then further use AI to gather even more detailed information about their targeted victims from social media and other sources to enable the scammers to create believable scams that appear to be legitimate claims such as posing as creditors of the decedent or government officials seeking payments for a debt.
TIPS
Scammers prey on people at their most vulnerable so it is at times like the death of a family member that you must be your most vigilant. When writing an obituary, don’t put in specific information such as names that can be used by a scammer. Also, contact the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian to seal the credit report of the deceased in order to avoid the risk of identity theft. If someone contacts you claiming a debt was owed by the deceased, demand written confirmation for you to review before paying any alleged debts. Don’t be pressured to act quickly by a purported debt collector.
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Scam of the day – September 26, 2026 – Geek Squad Phishing Email
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 looked 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:
Geek Squad |
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Invoice Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2026 |
Your membership benefits remain fully active |
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Hi Stevenjjweisman, |
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Thank you for being a valued customer. This message is an official notification regarding the scheduled renewal of your Geek Squad subscription. |
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The renewal details for your active account are outlined below: |
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Renewal Service Record |
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This transaction will be billed automatically to the primary payment method registered to your account. |
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Customer Support & Account Management |
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Acknowledged once more,, |
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 Hawaii. 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.
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Scam of the day – September 25, 2026 – Facebook Cloning Remains a Problem
Recently I got a Facebook friend request from a good friend of mine. The only problem was that we were already were Facebook friends.
If one of your friends received a Facebook friend request that appeared to come from you, it does not mean that your account was hacked. It does mean however that, most likely, your account was cloned in the sense that someone has set up a Facebook account or some other social media account in your name or a slight variation of it in order to trick people into trusting messages that they post, to lure them into scams or to trick them into clicking on links containing malware.
This is nothing new. Facebook estimates that there are as many as 60 million phony cloned Facebook accounts including hundreds of its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook tries to remove the cloned accounts when it becomes aware of them, but they consistently spring up again soon thereafter. You also should let your friends know that your account has been cloned and warn them not to accept any new friend requests from you. If you do find that someone has set up a Facebook account in your name, you should contact Facebook as soon as possible in order for Facebook to take action to cancel the phony cloned account. Here is a link you can use to report such a phony or cloned account. https://www.facebook.com/help/306643639690823?helpref=uf_permalink
TIPS
As indicated above, if you do receive a friend request from someone who already is a Facebook friend of yours, you should contact the friend to let them know that their Facebook account has been cloned so they can report it to Facebook and get the phony, cloned account taken down. It is also important to remember that there will be times that you are contacted by what appear to be real friends or acquaintances where the truth is that it really is not them contacting you, but someone posing as them. Never click on links in any email or text message unless you have absolutely confirmed that the communication is legitimate. Never provide personal information in response to any communication as well until you have confirmed that it is legitimate. As I always warn you, trust me, you can’t trust anyone.
This is probably also a good time to remind you about steps you can take to actually make your Facebook account more impervious to actually being hacked. The first thing you should do is make sure you have a strong password. For some advice about choosing a strong password, go to the Search scams tab in http://www.scamicide.com and write in “strong password” which will bring up a number of Scams of the day in which I described how to pick a strong password.
You should also enable two factor authentication for your account which will dramatically strengthen the security of your Facebook account. Here is a link with more information about how to install dual factor authentication for your Facebook account. https://m.facebook.com/help/148233965247823?helpref=faq_content
You also may want to review your privacy settings on Facebook to make them less vulnerable to hackers. Here is a link with more information about adjusting your privacy settings on Facebook. https://m.facebook.com/help/193677450678703?helpref=hc_fnav&refid=69
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Scam of the day – September 24, 2026 – Dual Factor Authentication Scam
The headline of this Scam of the day may be a bit confusing because dual factor authentication is not itself a scam, but rather a tool to avoid being scammed.
It is not unusual for passwords to be compromised, particularly if you use the same password for all of your accounts, which you should not do. Using the same password puts all of your accounts in jeopardy if a data breach at one account results in your password being stolen. Here is a link to a Scam of the day in which I describe how to choose strong, unique passwords that are easy to remember. https://scamicide.com/2021/12/29/scam-of-the-day-december-30-2021-millions-of-passwords-stolen-how-does-that-affect-you/
However, regardless of how careful you are to protect your passwords, it is inevitable that your passwords will become compromised which is why I always suggest that people use dual factor authentication which protects your accounts even if your password is stolen. In the most common form of dual factor authentication, when you go to an online account and put in your password, a text message with a one-time code is sent to your cell phone for you to provide in addition to your password to gain access to your account. This system works well, but nothing is foolproof. Never underestimate the power of a fool.
Recently scammers have been sending text messages that appear to come from a company with which you do business informing you that there has been suspicious activity on your account and that you need to confirm your identity or else your account will be locked. You are then told that in order to do so, you will receive a text message with a code that you should, in turn, text back as a reply to the scammer. Unfortunately, what is actually happening is that the scammer has already managed to obtain your password and has just tried to log in to your account which is protected by dual factor authentication, so if you do send the code to the scammer, you will have defeated dual factor authentication and enabled the scammer to access your account.
TIPS
This is an easy scam to avoid. First of all, as I have said many times, whenever you receive an email, phone call or text message, you cannot be sure as to who is really contacting you so you should never provide personal information of any kind or click on a link provided unless you have absolutely confirmed that the text message was legitimate. You can do this by contacting the real company that the text message purports to be from. However, if you receive a text message such as the one described above, you can be sure that it is a scam because no company will ever ask for your dual factor authentication code through an email or text message.
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Scam of the day – September 23, 2026 – Hotel Reservation Hijacking Scam
Scammers are using social engineering, which is just the fashionable way to say psychology, and contacting hotels and convincing the hotel IT workers to give access to their computer networks. Social engineering has been used effectively by cybercrime groups such as Shiny Hunters to gain access to the computer networks of many companies. Shiny Hunters uses social engineering to gain access to their targeted companies to install ransomware. The scammers gaining access to hotel computer networks use the access to harvest information about legitimate upcoming hotel reservations of the hotel’s customers. They then pose as the hotel and contact the customers with requests for payments that may seem legitimate, particularly since the email may not only appear to come from the hotel, but provide details of the actual reservations of their customers.
TIPS
As always, you can never be sure when you get an email, text message or phone call as to who is really contacting you so you should never click on a link, make a payment or provide personal information in response to any communication unless you have absolutely confirmed that it is legitimate. In response to an email that appears to come from your hotel asking for a payment or credit card information, merely confirm by calling the actual hotel at a telephone number you have confirmed is legitimate. Don’t call the phone number provided in the email. Also, as I often advise you, don’t make any payments using your debit card because the protection you get from fraudulent payments is not as good as you get when you pay with your credit card.
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Scam of the day – September 22, 2026 – Amazon Prime Day is Coming and so are the Scams
Amazon Prime Day is coming October 6th and 7th. Recently there has been an increase in the number of scams related to Amazon Prime which is not surprising since there are approximately 220 million Amazon Prime members. Scammers attempt to lure people into providing their credit card information or Amazon user name and password to the scammer posing as an Amazon employee. Typically, these scams start with an email, text message or phone call either informing the targeted victim that their membership needs to be renewed. In some instances the scammers indicate that the credit card tied to the account is no longer able to be used, threatening to suspend the Amazon Prime account unless a new credit card is provided.
TIPS
Some of these phishing emails and text messages, which in the past had poor grammar and spelling having been sent from scammers in a country where English is not their native language are now, through AI able to appear entirely legitimate. Phone calls coming from a foreign country can be “spoofed” to appear as if the call is coming from Amazon and through AI voice cloning the scammer can appear to speak perfect English without a foreign accent.
Never click on a link in an email or text message or provide personal information unless you have confirmed that the email, phone call or text message is legitimate. The telephone number to call if you suspect Amazon related fraud is 866-216-1075 or you can call their real customer service number 888-280-4331 Never call the numbers that appears in phishing emails.
Also, because any of us can be scammed, it is a good idea to use dual factor authentication whenever possible to protect your various accounts so that even if someone actually had your password they would not be able to access your account. In order to set up dual factor authentication for your Amazon account use this link. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G3PWZPU52FKN7PW4
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Scam of the day – September 21, 2026 – FBI Announces 35 More Victims of Fake 49er Football Player
In the Scam of the day for August 30, 2026 I first told you about criminal charges being brought against Daejon Love who the FBI said posed as a San Francisco 49er football player while scamming 26 women through an investment scam with his co-conspirator Taylor Jamie Chan. At the time, the FBI indicated that they believed there were many more victims and now the FBI announced that they have identified 35 more women scammed by Love and Chan.
Daejon Love and Taylor Jamie Chan were originally arrested and charged with operating an unusual version of a romance-investment scam in which they are alleged to have stolen $1.3 million from 26 women in California, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Romance scams used to follow the pattern of scammers meeting people online and pretending to quickly fall deeply in love with them and then convince their victims to send the scammers money for various fake emergencies. The scam has evolved, however to where now the scammers still feign love, but instead of asking for a gift of money, they tell their victims that they have a great investment that is making the scammer massive amounts of money and they want to offer that investment to their targeted victim. Of course, there is no investment and the victims lose everything they “invested” with their new found love.
What is unusual in this case is that Daejon Love is alleged to have claimed that he was a wealthy professional football player for the San Francisco 49ers and even provided videos and photos that appeared to support his claim. In fact, some Google searches and AI even supported this false claim. False information provided by AI and in search engine searches is called “hallucinations” and the reason that this occurs is that both AI and more common search engines harvest their information from the Internet and if a scammer is able to place enough false information in enough places, it can be reported as accurate.
TIPS
No one should ever invest in anything that they don’t understand and with someone whom they have not researched. Rather than trusting social media posts and search engine searches, if the victims of Love had checked the roster for the San Francisco 49ers they would have learned he was scamming them. Further, Chan was presented by Love as his successful financial advisor, but if anyone had researched Chan, they would have learned that he had utterly no licenses. financial credentials or affiliations that a financial advisor must have.
As for the investments provided by Love and Chan, according to the FBI there were no investments. Love just kept the money “invested” with him. The only evidence of investments were phony investment records provided by Love and Chan. If the victims had done proper research into the investments they would have found that the investments were not registered anywhere and there was no independent documentation for the investments.
It is easy for someone to be emotionally manipulated by a romance scammer so it is very important if a romantic partner offers investment advice to be particularly skeptical. Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.
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Scam of the day – September 20, 2026 – Pump and Dump Scams Continue to Snare Victims
Pump and dump scams have been with us for hundreds of years, however recently they have evolved to keep pace with today’s world of finance. A Pump and dump scheme is most often done with low priced stocks referred to as “penny stocks.” The scammers buy low priced stocks and then artificially inflate the price of the stocks by using text messages, faxes, Internet chat rooms and other means of communication posing as people with inside information that indicates that a stock is about to rise. This prompts victims of the scam to buy the stock and temporarily inflate the value of the stock. Meanwhile, the scammers sell their stock when the stock price gets bumped up and are long gone when the stock deflates and reverts back to its true value.
Scammers have increased their use of AI to enhance their pump and dump scams with phony social media accounts and AI generated deepfake videos of celebrities and real SEC registered advisors to make their scams more attractive.
Recently Julius Czurgo was sentenced to 27 months in prison for committing nineteen pump and dump scams between 2015 and 2019 that resulted in $100 million in profits.
TIPS
Remember my motto, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” You should never invest in anything unless you have carefully investigated the investment and understand it fully. It is highly unlikely that a cold caller about whom you know nothing is going to be providing you with a great investment opportunity.
Before investing with anyone, you should investigate the person offering to sell you the investment with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Central Registration Depository. This will tell you if the broker is licensed and if there have been disciplinary procedures against him or her. You can also check with your own state’s securities regulation office for similar information. Many investment advisers will not be required to register with the SEC, but are required to register with your individual state’s securities regulators. You can find your state’s agency by going to the website of the North American Securities Administrators Association. You should also check with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for information about the particular investment adviser.
It is also important to remember that you should never invest in something that you do not completely understand. This was a mistake that many of Bernie Madoff’s victims made. You also may want to check out the SEC’s investor education website at www.investor.gov. Scammers can be very convincing and it may sound like there is a great opportunity for someone to make some money, but you must be careful that the person making money is not the scam artist taking yours.
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