Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – August 5, 2025 – FBI Issues Warning About Imposter Scams
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 by cryptocurrencies, gift cards, credit card or wired funds. Being asked to pay by gift cards or cryptocurrencies is a definite indication that the call is a scam since no company or governmental agency requests or accepts payments by gift cards or cryptocurrencies.
Recently the FBI field Office for South Carolina isued a warning about scammers posing as FBI agents calling their intended victims on the phone and telling them that they have missed federal jury duty or have an outstanding arrest warrant against them. The victim of the scam is told to expect a second phone call from another purported federal agent. In the second call, the vicitm is told to withdraw large sums of money and convert it to cryptocurrency at a cryptocurrency ATM and to send it through the ATM to the supposed account of the FBI. In another variation of this scam, the victims receive phony text messages purportedly from the FBI with links to documents that appear to come from the FBI, the federal district court or even the United States Supreme Court making the demands for payment.
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.
As for this particular scam, it is important to remember that the FBI will never demand payment through gift cards, cryptocurrencies, wire transfers or cash deposits at cryptocurrency ATMs.
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Scam of the day – August 4, 2025 – TRAPS ACT Legislation Proposed to Combat Scams
It is rare in today’s political climate to find something that Republicans and Democrats agree upon so it is heartening to see the recent introduction in the U.S. Senate of the TRAPS Act, which is an acronym for Taskforce for Recognizing and Averting Payment scams. The legislation was sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho. and co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia. If enacted into law the Act would create a new federal task force led by the Treasury Department and including members from eight other federal agencies and departments including the Consumer Financial Protectioin Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission.
The purpose of the task force would be to analyze trends in various payment scams including spoofed calls, text message scams and more as well as identify effective methods of preventing such scams, The task force would also review the current mehtods used to scam consumers through various payment platforms such as bank accounts and gift cards. It would also work to develop educational programs for the public to arm everyone against scams.
TIPS
Informing people about scams is what we do every day at Scamicide.com and we applaud the efforts of Senator Crapo and the other sponsors of the legislation to take action to protect people from being scammed. I urge you to contact your Senator and ask them to support this important legislation.
Meanwhile the best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm so keep following Scamicide and suggest to your friends and family to follow Scamicide so you can be alerted to the latest scams and how to avoid them and protect yourself. We are all in this together.
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Scam of the day – August 3, 2025 – Frequent Flier Miles Theft Increasing
I have written numerous times in the past about the theft of frequent flier miles from the accounts of unwary customers. Recently there has been a dramatic increase in the stealing of frequent flier miles from the accounts of unsuspecting airline customers who participate in the various airline frequent flier programs. The reasons for this is because this kind of theft is easy to accomplish, easy to avoid detection and quite profitable. Hackers often take advantage of the fact that many people use the same username and password for many accounts. With so many usernames and passwords available to identity thieves due to the many data breaches that have become common occurrences, identity thieves are able to use usernames and passwords that they buy on the Dark Web, that part of the Internet where hackers buy and sell such information, to easily access the frequent flier accounts from people who use the same username and passwords for multiple accounts. In other instances, identity thieves will use socially engineered spear phishing emails to pose as the airlines and lure the victims into providing their usernames and passwords to the identity thief, often under the guise of confirming information for the airline. Because people so rarely monitor their frequent flier accounts, criminals who steal frequent flier miles often go undetected for long periods of time.
Even travel experts such as Clint Henderson, the managing editor of the travel site The Points Guy can fall prey to this scam. He lost more than 400,000 miles from his American Airlines account when it was hacked.
Once the criminal gains access to the account, they can profit from the information in many ways including redeeming the points for merchandise from retailers participating in the frequent flier program, transferring the points to another clean account from which they can use the points for themselves or redeeming the points for travel vouchers which they then sell posing as legitimate travel websites.
TIPS
In order to protect yourself you should have a unique username and password for each of your online accounts including your frequent flier accounts. This is a basic tenet of online security that you should be following. In addition sign up for dual factor authentication for all of your accounts. Also, monitor your frequent flier miles accounts regularly to recognize any hacking as early as possible.Finally, in regard to your frequent flier miles, you should always shred your boarding passes. Don’t merely thrown them away in trash receptacles at the airport. The bar code on your boarding pass contains important information including your frequent flier account number that can be used to make you a victim of identity theft.
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Scam of the day – August 2, 2025 – AI as a Tool to Combat Scams
For the last few years I have told you about numerous instances where artificial intelligence (AI) has been used by scammers to make their scams more believeable. Romance scams, celebrity imposter scams, phishing email scams, business email compromise scams and counterfeit websites are just a few of the scams that have been made far worse through scammers use of AI technology including voice cloning and deepfakes. Fortunately, however, AI is a double edged sword and more and more it is being used by legitimate companies to recognize and even predict scam trends to help avoid being scammed.
Recently, Paypal has introduced new AI powered scam alerts for its Payal and Venmo Friends and Family Payments. The peer to peer payment system Venmo is owned by PayPal. Its Friends and Family payment option is intended to be used only to send money to friends and family and not for commercial purposes, however this has not stopped scammers from tricking people into using PayPal and Venmo to unwittingly pay scammers.
The new dynamic scam detection system monitors payments and will issue an alert when it detects a potential scam. The alerts reflect the risk level of the payment and become stronger when the risk is determined to be greater. It will even automatically block payments in very high risk situations. The AI system used by PayPal utilizes machine learning to adapt to newer scams that haven’t even been previously identified.
Visa and Mastercard are also increasingly using AI to detect scams by monitoring transactions and recognizing potential scams as well as constantly learning about and even predicting new scams.
TIPS
While PayPal offers significant protection from fraudulent transactions, Venmo does not offer such protection, which is why it should never be used for commercial transactions, but only to transfer small amounts of money to people you know. It is important to remember that the new AI powered scam alerts for Venmo only apply to its Friends and Family Payments.
As for your credit card, the major credit card companies do a good job at protecting you from scams. In addition, under federal law your liability for unauthorized use of a credit card is limited to no more than $50 and most credit card companies will not even hold you responsible for even that amount However, your liability for unauthorized use of your debit card can potentially be unlimited if you do not promptly notice and report the fraudulent use of your card thereby putting your entire bank account tied to your debit card in jeopardy so when choosing whether to use your credit card or debit card for retail transactions, you should always pick your credit card In addition, even if you notice and report the unauthorized use of your debit card immediately, your bank account is frozen while the bank investigates the matter thereby temporarily taking away your own access to your bank account. Limit your debit card use to ATMs.
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Scam of the day – August 1, 2025 – New Louisiana Law Protects Victims From Cryptocurrency ATM Scams
A report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) indicates a 1,000 % increase in money lost to scammers through cryptocurrency ATMs in the last three years. Cryptocurrency ATMs look just like traditional ATMs, but instead of distributing cash, they take cash in exchange for cryptocurrency and enable the transfer of the deposited cash turned into cyptocurrency into crypto wallets. Due to the anonymity and immediacy of the cryptocurrency transfers done through a cryptocurrency ATM, it is a favorite method of payment for scammers.
Most of the scams using cryptocurrency ATMs involve imposter scams where the scammer poses as either a law enforcement officer, government official or someone providing tech support for a non-existent problem. What many of these imposter scams have in common is that they scare the targeted victim with a story about an emergency that requires them to take cash from their bank account and use a QR code provided by the scammer to deposit the money into the account of the scammer at a cryptocurrency ATM under the guise of protecting the funds. In other versions of the scams, victims are told they must make a payment through a cryptocurrency ATM to avoid prosecution for missing jury duty or some othe pretense.
In the Scam of the day for March 4, 2025 I told you about a bill presently before Congress entitled the Crypto ATM Fraud Prevention Act would prevent new users of the cryptocurrency ATMs from spending more than $2,000 in a single day or $10,000 over a two week period to purchase cryptocurrency at cryptocurrency ATMs. The proposed law would also require cryptocurrency ATM companies to speak directly with new customers attempting to perform transactions of more than $500 and require full refunds when those customers file police reports and alert companies operating cryptocurrency ATMs within 30 days of their transactions. This bill is, however, far from passage.
Meanwhile, beginning today, Louisiana has a new law that regulates cryptocurrency ATMs in that state limiting the daily transaction abmount to $3,000 and requiring a 72 hour hold on all transfers with the ability to cancel transactions. This is particularly helpful for people acting quickly and emotionally to the threat posed by a scammer and then realizing they had been scammed. The Louisiana law also requies the posting at all ATMs of a warning that no government official will ever request a payment through a cryptocurrency ATM.
TIPS
Protecting yourself from these imposter scams that form the basis of cryptocurrency ATM scams starts with recognizing that you can never be sure who is actually contacting you when you are contacted by phone, email or text message so you should never click on a link, download an attachment or provide personal information in response to any of those communications unless you have absolutely confirmed that the communication was legitimate. Further there is no circumstance where you will be asked by anyone legitimate to withdraw funds from your bank, deposit them into a cryptocurrency ATM and transfer the funds to them. Only scammers make those requests.
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Scam of the day – July 31, 2025 – Denver Pastor Indicted on Cryptocurrency Scam
Affinity fraud is the name for the type of fraud where people put undeserved trust in someone offering an investment opportunity because that person is “someone like me.” Affinity fraud works because people trust other people who may share a common bond, such as family, religion or some other group affiliation. The list goes on and on. Over the years I have reported on many instances of affinity fraud perpetrated against a wide variety of people. Scammers take advantage of every connection they can make with their victims to gain their trust and then steal their money.
In the Scam of the day for February 4, 2024 I told you about fraud charges brought by the Colorado Division of Securities against Colorado Pastor Eli Regalado and his wife who created a cryptocurrency called INDXcoin and sold it to members of his church and other churchgoers in the Denver area through a cryptocurrency marketplace that he created and controlled. He announced he was selling the cryptocurrency on YouTube telling people that God told him to do this and that God said it was a safe and profitable investment. It wasn’t. More than a million dollars of investors money went to fund the pastor’s and his wife’s extravagant lifestyle and, according to the Colorado Division of Securities, INDXcoin is worthless. Eligio Regalado and his wife Kaitlyn Regalado were tried in a bench trial before a judge in May, however, the judge has not yet issued a ruling on the civil charges. Meanwhile, the two Realados were indicted this week on forty criminal charges related to the same scam.
TIPS
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. Many investment advisers will not be required to register with the SEC, but are required to register with your individual state 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.
As for Cryptocurrency investing, it is 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. Cryptocurrency scams quite often involve complicated language and investment terms that are purposefully unclear in an effort to confuse potential investors from understanding the real facts. 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. Additionally, investing with someone merely because you share the same heritage, nationality, religion or any other affinity is something you should avoid.
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Scam of the day – July 30, 2025 – Real Estate Influencer Indicted for Ponzi Scheme
New Jersey real estate influencer and investor Cesar Humberto Pina, also known as “Flipping NJ” was recently charged with wire fraud, money laundering and other charges related to allegedly operating a Ponzi scheme in which he promised investors returns of 20% to 45% in five months for investing in his purported real estate flipping business. As anyone who watches HGTV knows, flipping houses involves buying houses, quickly updating them and then reselling them at a substantial profit. According to US Attorney Alina Habba, Pina used his social media influence and seminars throughout the country to promote the scam in which rather than use the money invested to purchase, renovate and resell the properties, he is accused of using the funds for his own personal purposes and paying earlier investors with money from later investors, the hallmark of a Ponzi scheme. According to US Attorney Habba, Pina stole millions from unwary investors.
TIPS
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. Additionally, investing with someone merely because you trust them because you have heard them on the radio, television or social media is a bad idea.
Be wary of seminars that offer get rich quick schemes that indicate that little effort or investment by you is required. Do your research with the FTC and your state’s attorney general to see if there have been complaints against any company that puts on such seminars. As always, if the promised returns appear too good to be true, they probably are. In this case, the promised returns should have been a red flag that this could be a scam.
As for flipping houses, here is a link to a Bankrate.com story about the pros and cons of house flipping.https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/flipping-houses/
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Scam of the day – July 29, 2025 – Target Sued Over Gift Card Scams Part 2
In yesterday’s Scam of the Day I told you about a lawsuit filed against Target by four victims of the impersonator scam where scammers posed as government agents such as IRS agents and convinced their victims to purchase Target gift cards to send to them to resolve phony problems. Scammers are big fans of gift cards because they are easy to purchase, easy to send to the scammer and impossible to trace to the scammer. It is not even necessary for the scammer to be in possession of the actual gift card to use it. Sending the gift card numbers or taking a picture on your phone and transmitting it to the scammer is sufficient for the scammer to use the gift card to buy things that can then be sold and converted into cash.
Today’s Scam of the Day involves a class action filed by Target customers from 21 states who bought gift cards tampered with by scammers that resulted in the scammers emptying the gift cards of their value. The plaintiffs allege that Target is aware of this problem and has not done enough to stop it.
This type of scam is called gift card draining. The most common way gift card draining occurs involves scammers going to racks of gift cards in stores and using handheld scanners that are easy to obtain, read the code on the strip of the card and the number on the front. They then put the card back in the display and periodically check with the retailer by calling its 800 number to find out whether the card has been activated and what the balance is on the card. Once they have this information they either create a counterfeit card using the information they have stolen or order material online without having the actual card in hand.
Another common way gift card draining occurs is when scammers place a sticker with the barcode of a a gift card that the scammers possess over the actual barcode of the gift card in the rack. Thus when the card is taken by the gift card purchaser to the checkout counter to have the card activated, the funds used to purchase the gift card are credited to the card of the scammer. It is not until the gift card purchaser tries to use his or her card that it is discovered that there are no funds credited to the card.
Some retailers, in an effort to reduce gift card fraud put a PIN on the gift card so that if the card is used online, the user must have access to the PIN which is generally covered and must have the covering material scratched off in order to be visible. Unfortunately, many purchasers of gift cards are not aware of this so they don’t even notice that the PIN on the card that they are purchasing has already had the covering material scratched off by the scammer who has recorded the PIN.
TIPS
As wtih so many scams, the best place to look for a helping hand is at the end of your own arm. When buying a gift card, only purchase cards from behind the customer service desk and if the card is preloaded, always ask for the card to be scanned to show that it is still fully valued. This avoids all of the problems of tampering with the card before it is sold.
Always inspect the card carefully to make sure that the barcode has not been tampered with in any fashion and that the PIN is still covered. Unfortunately, many purchasers of gift cards are not aware of this so they don’t even notice that the PIN on the card that they are purchasing has already had the covering material scratched off by the scammer who has recorded the PIN
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Scam of the day – July 28, 2025 – Target Sued Over Gift Card Scams Part 1
Scammers are big fans of gift cards because they are easy to purchase, easy to send to the scammer and impossible to trace to the scammer. It is not even necessary for the scammer to be in possession of the actual gift card to use it. Sending the gift card numbers or taking a picture on your phone and transmitting it to the scammer is sufficient for the scammer to use the gift card to buy things that can then be sold and converted into cash.
In many instances the scams involved scammers posing as large companies or government agencies such as the IRS demanding payments. This is called an “impersonator scam.” It is important to remember that no legitimate company and no government agencies asks for or accepts gift cards as a payment method so anytime you are asked for a payment by gift card, you can be confident it is a scam.
In an interesting development, the FTC noted that Target gift cards were the most popular choice for scammers with scammers asking specifically for Target gift cards in twice as many instances as the next most popular gift card and even when the gift card requested by the scammers was not a Target gift card, the scammers asked their victims to purchase the particular gift cards at a Target store. Recently four victims of the impersonator scam In Pennsylvania sued Target alleging that Target failed to use its own security algorithms and real-time tracking software to prevent these scams. The plaintiffs further allege that Target benefited financially from these scams and did not take proper steps to stop it.
TIPS
Fortunately, scams requiring payment through gift cards are easy to avoid. Anytime anyone approaches you with a business transaction in which you are asked to pay through gift cards, you can be confident that it is a scam. The IRS has even had to post on its website that it does not accept gift cards as payments. An important thing to remember is that gift cards are gifts, they are not used as a payment method for any legitimate transaction so if you are asked to pay for any business transaction through a gift card, you can be sure it is a scam
It would be helpful if more companies that sell gift cards would routinely train their employees to recognize scams and require them to ask their customers when larger gift cards are being purchased as to the reason for purchasing the gift cards. The FTC has recently created new posters for retailers to put up near where they sell gift cards to warn consumers about gift card related scams.
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Scam of the day – July 27, 2025 – Massive Data Breach at Allianz Life
I have been writing a lot recently about data breaches which is not really surprising since last year alone there were 9,478 publicly disclosed data breaches exposing over more than 35.9 billion records globally and 2025 appears to be on its way to a record number of data breaches. Data breaches are an unfortunate fact of life for all of us and can readily lead to identity theft and other harm.
The most recent data breach involves Allianz Life, a major insurance company. Yesterday they confirmed that they suffered a data breach on July 16th due to a supply chain attack, which is when the cybercriminals target a company used by their real target to steal information. In this case the cybercriminals were able to access a database of personal information of a majority its customers, financial professionals and Allianz employees. In the United States alone, Alianz Life has 1.4 million customers. Like many recent data breaches, this was not a result of a sophisticated computer hacking, but rather done through social engineering which occurs when the cybercriminals contact a targeted company and pose as employees and convince helpdesks at targeted companies to provide computer access to the cybercriminals. The massive data breaches done by the group Scattered Spider in recent years have been effectively done through social engineering.
TIPS
Potential victims of this data breach should freeze their credit if they have not already done so. Freezing your credit is actually something everyone should do. It is free and easy to do. In addition, it protects you from someone using your identity to obtain loans or make large purchases even if they have your Social Security number. If you have not already done so, put a credit freeze on your credit reports at all of the major credit reporting agencies. Here are links to each of them with instructions about how to get a credit freeze:
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
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