Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – October11, 2025 – Toll Text Message Scam Continues to Claim Victims
The E-Z Pass transponder system is available to drivers in twenty states and enables the drivers to avoid stopping to pay tolls when driving on toll roads. Instead they merely drive through a special lane where their transponder is electronically read. The tolls are then charged to a credit card on file with E-Z Pass. It is a very efficient system that works well. It also works well for scammers. In 2014 I told you about scammers sending phishing emails to residents of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and even Canada where they system is also used. The emails appeared official looking and carried the easily counterfeited logo of E-Z Pass. The message was short and read: “Dear customer, You have not paid for driving on a toll road. This invoice is sent repeatedly, please service your debt in the shortest possible time.” The phishing email of 2014 lured people into clicking on an infected link and providing personal information that would lead to identity theft.
Times have changed, but not that much. In 2021 I first told you how this scam had moved to text messaging rather than emails. Phishing text messages are called “smishing.” Again, the text message indicates that the account is overdue and provides a link to a fraudulent page where victims of the scam provide their credit card information to the scammers. The text message version of this scam became more widespread in 2024 as scammers used phishing kits available for purchase on the Dark Web to create realistic text message scams that appear to come from your state’s E-Z pass system. Recently Colorado issued a warning about this scam increasing in that state.
TIPS
Never click on links or download attachments in emails or text messages regardless of how official they may appear. You can never be sure as to whether it is legitimate or not. Your best course of action is, if you have any inclination that it may be legitimate, to contact the real company or agency and inquire as to the legitimacy of the contact. The websites the scammers lure you into going to in order to pay the phony overdue tolls often look legitimate, such as myturnpiketollservices.com. You can’t trust them.
It is also important to remember that scammers can manipulate your Caller ID through a technique called spoofing to make their text message appear to come from the legitimate number of a legitimate source. Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. If you have any concerns that you may owe tolls, call your E-Z Pass provider for your state making sure you are calling the real number or go the real website.
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Scam of the day – October 10, 2025 – PayPal Resolution Center Scam
PayPal is a popular payment service used successfully by many people particularly when making purchases through eBay. However, because it is so popular with the public, it is also popular with scammers who over the years have created numerous PayPal based scams about which I have reported to you in the past. Many of the scams involve phony invoices that lure you into clicking on malware infected links or providing personal information that is used to make you a victim of identity theft.
Today’s Scam of the day is one that has been around since 2018, but is resurfacing, as many scams do. It starts with a phony email purporting to be from PayPal that indicates that PayPal is investigating a payment reversal due to your receiving an unauthorized payment due to a transaction error. You are directed in the email to click on a link to login and access your PayPal Resolution Center. Don’t do it! Clicking on the link will take you to a phony PayPal website that will lure you into providing your password and other personal information that will lead to identity theft.
TIPS
Fortunately, this particular scam is easy to avoid. You should start out by being aware that this scam is active and remembering my motto, “BS – Be skeptical.” The easy way to avoid this scam is to never log into your PayPal account through a link in an email because to do so may merely take you to fake email account. Always access your PayPal account independently through your browser.
Legitimate emails from a company with which you do business would include the last four digits of your account and include your name rather than just your email address. Often these emails have neither.
Other telltale signs that this is a scam is that the email address of the sender often has no relation to PayPal, but is merely the email address of someone whose email account was hacked and made a part of a botnet to send out these phishing emails. Also, merely because the email may contain a PayPal logo does not mean that the email is legitimate. It is easy to counterfeit a PayPal logo.
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Scam of the day – October 9, 2025 – Canadian Family Loses $200,000 to Investment Scams
Last year Galina Bailey and her husband decided to invest their savings. Unfortunately, rather than consider established, legitimate investment advisers and companies they chose their invstment adviser through a post they saw on social media. When they realized after a few months that they had been scammed they turned to a lawyer to help them, but again she turned to social media to find a lawyer, choosing a UK based lawyer she found on Facebook rather than checking through legitimate lawyer referral services and ended up losing more money.
TIPS
In the United States, before investing with anyone, you should also investigate the person offering to sell you the investment with FINRA’s Central Registration Depository. http://www.finra.org/industry/crd 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 securities regulators. You can find your state’s agency by going to the website of the North American Securities Administrators Association .http://www.nasaa.org/2709/how-to-check-out-your-broker-or-investment-adviser/ For Canadians, such as Galina Bailey, they should go to the site AreTheyRegistered.ca, which is a public database that provides you with information as to whether the investment adviser or company is registered and qualified to do business in Canada.
Social Media is not the place to go to find an investment adviser or a lawyer. Moreover, the law protects social media companies from liability for third parties including scammers who post on their sites. Never invest in anything you do not understand and have not researched, nor should you invest with anyone or any company unless you have confirmed that they are legitimate.
Scam of the day – October 8, 2025 – Phony Parking Ticket Scam
For a year municipal authorities in San Francisco have warned about scammers putting phony, but legitimate appearing parking tickets on the cars of people. The phony parking tickets contain a QR code that takes you to a bogus, but legitimate appearing website where you are prompted to pay the ticket. Making things worse,if you fall for this scam, you are likely to lose more money than the amount of the phony parking fine because you have turned over your credit or debit card number to the scammers to use as they see fit. While this scam seems to have originated in California, it is spreading throughout the country.
Quick Response codes or QR codes have been around since 1994, but they have become much more popular in recent years and can be commonly found on parking meters, in restaurants and in advertising. When you scan a QR code with your phone, it will take you to a website. Unfortunately as the popularity of QR codes has increased with the public, its popularity has also increased with scammers who are setting up phony QR codes to lure you to their bogus website where they solicit personal information used for identity theft or persuade you to make a payment with a credit card or even in some instances, merely by scanning the phony QR code, you will download harmful malware such as ransomware or even malware that will enable the scammer to take over your email account. I have written about QR code scams called “quishing” since 2021.
TIPS
As I often say, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” If you receive such a parking ticket you may wish to confirm with your local parking authority whether it is legitimate or not before paying it.
Finally, there are companies that have free QR code scanner apps that will not only scan the QR code, but also let you know if it is legitimate and prevent the downloading of malware from bogus QR codes.
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Scam of the day – October 7, 2025 – ParkMobile Class Action Settlement
ParkMobile the popular mobile and web parking payment platform suffered a data breach in 2021 resulting in personal information of 22 million of its users being compromised and then leaked on a Dark Web hacking forum making the information available to anyone accessing the site. The data stolen included names, cell phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, license plate numbers and vehicle information. A class action was filed by victims of the data breach and last week ParkMobile sent out emails notifying the affected members of the class that they would be receiving the princely sum of one dollar through a $0.25 discount on ParkMobile’s service fees for four uses. In addition, except in California where such a provision is illegal, victims of the data breach must use the credit by October 8, 2026. In order to use the credit you need to manually add it to your account using the discount code of P@rkMobile-$1 under Payment-Discounts before starting a session.
Fortunately, the data compromised in the data breach is not sensitive material such as Social Security numbers that can directly lead to identity theft, but the information is valuable to a scammer or identity thief who can use this information to craft convincing, legitimate appearing spear phishing emails to lure people into making payments, clicking on infected links or providing personal information that can lead to identity theft. ParkMobile is warning people of phony text messages that appear to come from ParkMobile asking them to click on a link to pay a phony balance online.
TIPS
Everyone, regardless of whether you are a victim of a data breach or not should freeze their credit if they have not already done so. Actually, 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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Scam of the day – October 6, 2025 – Chinese “Goddess of Wealth” Convicted in UK of Operating a Massive Ponzi Scheme
Zhimin Qian, the self-proclaimed “Goddess of Wealth” was convicted this week in the UK on money laundering charges related to a massive Ponzi scheme that she operated in China between 2014 and 2017 that cost her 128,000 victims $6.7 billion. Qian claimed that she was a fintech innovator, but the truth is that between 2014 and 2017 she operated her company, Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology in China as a Ponzi scheme soliciting investors with promises of daily dividends and guaranteed profits of as much as 300%. Investors flooded her with money despite there being no clear explanation of how her company generated protifts or even what its actual business model was. Like all Ponzi schemes she kept the scam alive by paying early investors with funds derived from later investors. She fled China in 2017 and went to the UK where she attempted to launder the stolen funds though cryptocurrencies, real estate and other assets.
TIPS
Of course, an immediate red flag is the too good to be true guaranteed profits and when this was coupled with no clear explanation of what the investment consisted of you had a recipe for disaster. No one should ever invest in anything that they don’t fully understand and Qian’s company offered no clear explanation as to how they generated profits. Before investing with a company you should always do research on it. Anyone doing research on Qian’s company would have found that it was not registered with any financial regulatory agency. In addition, anyone doing research into Zhimin Qian herself would have learned that she had no degrees, knowledge or licenses related to investments.
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Scam of the day – October 5, 2025 – Gift Cards Are A Scammers Best Friend
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. According to the FTC, consumers lost 217 million dollars to gift card scams in 2024. 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. 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.
TIPS
Although it is impossible to stop payment on a gift card or trace the user after the scammer has used it, if you recognize immediately that you have provided a gift card to a scammer, you can report it to the issuer to cancel the card. Here is contact information for some popular gift cards.
Amazon
- Call 1 (888) 280-4331.
- Keep the Amazon card itself and your receipt for the Amazon card.
- Learn about Amazon gift card scams and how to report them. Click on “Contact us.”
Google Play
- Report the gift card scam to Google.
- Keep the Google Play card itself and your receipt for the Google Play card.
- Learn about Google Play gift card scams and how to report them.
iTunes
- Call Apple Support right away at 1 (800) 275-2273. Say “gift card” to connect with a live representative.
- Ask if the money is still on the iTunes card. If so, Apple can put a freeze on it. You might be able to get your money back from them.
- Keep the iTunes card itself and your receipt for the iTunes card.
- Learn about iTunes gift card scams and how to report them.
Target
- Call Target GiftCard Services at 1 (800) 544-2943
MoneyPak
- Report gift card scams to MoneyPak.
- Keep the MoneyPak card itself and your receipt for the MoneyPak card.
- Learn about MoneyPak gift card scams.
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Scam of the day – October 4, 2025 – New Hampshire Attorney General Warns About Job Scams
Job scams are fertile ground for scammers. I have written about many forms that these scams take. Recently the New Hampshire Attorney General issued a warning about scammers posing as local businesses sending emails and text messages that appear to come from New Hampshire companies offering employment. Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning about phony job offers being sent to people in text messages. While some job scams that may appear on legitimate sites such as monster.com or LinkedIn may be harder to determine as scams, this text message job offer and email job offer is easier to recognize as a scam because like lottery scams where you are told you have won a lottery you never entered, in this instance you are being offered a job that you never applied for. In both cases this is always a scam.
The text message may appear to be legitimate because the phone number from which it is being sent can be confirmed to be that of a legitimate company, however, it is a simple matter for a scammer to “spoof” the telephone number of a legitimate company to make it appear that the call is coming from a telephone number of a legitimate company when, in truth it is coming from a scammer at a different number.
The text message or email may require personal information including your Social Security number or require you to click on a link to take you to a phony site that will also ask for personal information. Alternatively, merely clicking on the link can download dangerous malware. Personal information provided can lead to identity theft.
TIPS
Unsolicited job offers coming to you by text message or email are always a scam. If you need further proof, you can always determine if the company purportedly offering you the job is legitimate by contacting their HR department to confirm that there was no job offer being made.
As always, it is a good practice to never click on a link in an email or text message unless you have confirmed it is legitimate and never provide personal information in response to a phone call, email or text message unless you have confirmed it is legitimate.
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Scam of the day – October 3, 2025 – Government Shutdown Scams
As always scammers are opportunists taking advantage of whatever is in the news, particularly if the news creates some sense of emergency and the present government shutdown fits the bill. Scammers are contacting targeted victims by emails, text messages and phone calls posing as officials from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or other federal programs claiming that their victims’ benefits have either been suspended or require veification to continue. They then either require personal information that can lead to identity theft, or a payment to continue benefits, often demanded to be made by gift cards or cryptocurrencies. Emails or text messages may carry the subject line of “Government Shutdown Notice” or “Benefits Suspension.” Due to the Federal Trade Commission being unable to process scam complaints during the shutdown it could be expected that these scams will be increasing.
TIPS
Federal agencies are not contacting people asking for information or payments related to the shutdown and no government agency accepts payments by gift cards or cryptocurrencies so if you are ever asked to make a payment in either manner, you can be sure it is a scam. You can never be sure when you get a phone call, text message or email as to who is really contacting you. Your Caller ID can be manipulated by spoofing to make it appear that a call or text from a scammer is coming from a legitimate government agency rather than from the scammer who is actually contacting you and the address of email senders can also be made to appear legitimate.
If you do have questions about benefits you are receiving, you should call the agency or go to their website, but make sure you use the correct number and not the number from any communication that appears to come from the scammer.
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Scam of the day – October 2, 2025 – Medicare Open Enrollment Scams
The annual open enrollment period for Medicare begins on October 15th and will end on December 7th. This is the only time during the year that people enrolled in Medicare can change their Medicare health plans, Medigap plans and prescription drug plans. By now, people already enrolled in Medicare should have received an Annual Notice of Change from their health insurance providers describing any changes to their plans such as the dropping of particular drugs from their prescription drug plan. If you are satisfied with your plans, you do not need to do anything.
Scammers and identity thieves view the open enrollment period as senior citizen hunting season as myriads of Medicare scams are common during this time. Seniors may be contacted by someone purporting to be from their insurance company asking them to verify information. This is a common tactic of identity thieves trying to trick their victims into providing information. They also may be contacted by people claiming to have supplemental insurance programs that will save them thousands of dollars. Here too, you cannot be sure that they are legitimate when they contact you by phone, text message, email or even regular mail. In addition, scammers send phishing emails that appear to come from your employer asking you to review and approve your health care benefit and then lure you into clicking on malware infected links or providing personal information that can lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft.
TIPS
Never give personal information to anyone who calls you on the phone because you can never be sure who is actually on the other end of the line. Through a technique called “spoofing,” a scammer can manipulate your Caller ID and make it appear that the call is from the government or some legitimate company when in fact, it is from an identity thief who is eager to steal your money. If you want to get information you can trust about what insurance plans are available to you and at what cost, merely go to the “Plan Finder” section of Medicare’s website http://www.medicare.gov. If you want to speak with someone on the phone, call Medicare at its 24 hour hotline 1-800-MEDICARE. Your Medicare options can be quite confusing. Fortunately, the State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIP) which is a national network of federally funded programs provides free Medicare counseling. Here is a link to SHIP’s website https://www.shiptacenter.org/
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