Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – March 12, 2026 – Phony Government Grant Scams Surge: How to Spot Facebook Fraudsters
The Federal Trade Commission is warning the public about an increase of phony grant scams. Recently there have been an increase in scams involving scammers convincing their victims that they are eligible for large government grants if they merely pay a processing fee. The federal government does not charge fees for applying for grants. Additionally, the scammers perpetrating this scam also often ask for personal information such as your birth date and Social Security number which they use to make you a victim of identity theft.
Many times Facebook is used as the medium through which people are contacted regarding this scam. It is not surprising that scammers use Facebook for these purposes. The popularity of Facebook and the fact that on Facebook you are communicating with your friends is reason enough for scammers to use Facebook as a platform for scams.
There also has been a resurgence of a Facebook related scam that starts with a private message that appears to come from one of your friends telling you that he or she just received a large government grant and that it was easy to do. Some of the key phrases used by scammers that you should be on the lookout for are “We do all the work. You just pay a processing fee;” and “You can’t get this information anywhere else.”
TIPS
Facebook accounts and email accounts are relatively easy for a skilled cybercriminal to hack so whenever you receive an email or message urging you to click on a link, provide personal information or, as in this scam, send money, you should always be skeptical and confirm that the communication is legitimate before responding. The message which appears to come from a Facebook friend of yours is most likely coming from a scammer who hacked into your real friend’s Facebook account and is hoping that your trust of your friend will outweigh your common sense. You should be particularly skeptical of any request to wire money or provide a gift card number because once funds have been transferred in this fashion, they are impossible to retrieve.
The federal government does not charge any fee to apply for a grant. Additionally, it is important to remember that government grants are not given for personal purposes, but only for public projects. Information about federal loans for housing, disaster relief, education and veterans benefits can be found at the federal government’s website http://www.GovLoans.gov. Finally For information about a range of other federal benefits for which you may be eligible, you can go the federal government’s website http://www.Benefits.gov.
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Scam of the day – March 11, 2026 – Texas Arrests Highlight Exploding Gold Bar Scam Targeting Older Adults
It was as recently as the Scam of the Day for February 23rd that I told you that the Boston office of the FBI had issued a warning scams involving people lured under false pretenses to cash in their savings, buy gold bars and deliver the gold to scammers. According to recent FBI figures this scam is getting worse with more than $262 million lost to this scam between January and October of 2025. I described this scam in the Scam of the day for May 7 2024 when I told you about Ravinkle Mathon who was convicted in Maryland of attempting to scam an elderly man out of $200,000 in an elaborate scam that has increased dramatically in the last year. The scam began with a phone call from Mathon to an elderly man in which Mathon posed as a federal agent telling the targeted victim that his identity had been stolen and that he needed to protect his savings by withdrawing all of his funds, purchasing gold with the funds and then turn the gold over to the alleged scammer for safe keeping. Fortunately, a family member of the targeted victim became aware of the scam and notified police who set up a sting and arrested Mathon when he came to collect the gold..
Now six people in Friendswood Texas were arrested and charged with being a part of this type of scam targeting elderly people in Texas, according to the Friendswood Police Department who are still actively investigating the scam which they say stole approximately $2.8 million from elderly Texans and they expect to find more victims. The police say that the scam typically starts with an overseas call center phone call setting p the scam with the scammers posing as federal agents or bank representatives. After the victims have been convinced into converting their savings into gold, local couriers collect the gold which is then money laundered with the proceeds being sent back overseas to the original scammers with the local couriers keeping a portion of the proceeds as their cut.
TIPS
The primary thing to keep in mind in order to avoid this scam is to remember that no government agency or legitimate business will ever request that you purchase gold or other precious metals for any purpose and certainly not to protect them from criminals nor will they tell you that you need to provide the gold to government agents for safekeeping.
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Scam of the day – March 10, 2026 – Summer Job and Intern Scams Already Starting
Although it is just the beginning of March many people, particularly college students are now looking for Summer jobs and scammers are taking advantage of this situation. Merely because a company posting an online job advertisement may be one that you are familiar with doesn’t mean that the advertisement to which you may be responding was placed by the actual company. Always check with the actual company by phone to confirm any job openings and advertisements.
Even if a company is listed by a legitimate online employment agency does not mean that the company advertising online with them is legitimate. Many of the scammers posing as potential employers or employment services will ask for upfront application fees which when paid by the job applicant leave the victim of the scam without a job and being cheated out of their money. Scammers also will ask for your Social Security number and bank account information so that they can directly deposit your salary check into your bank account, however, they are really seeking your Social Security number to make you a victim of identity theft and your bank account number so they can drain your account.
In another employment scam students are contacted through their email with an extremely attractive job offer. When the student accepts, the scammer sends an official appearing check to the student who is told to deposit the check into the student’s bank account. The check is actually made out in an amount more than what was agreed to be paid to the student and the student is instructed to wire the extra funds back to the company. Of course, the check is counterfeit and ultimately bounces, however, the money that the scammed student wires to the scammer from his or her bank account is lost forever.
Recently, scammers have been posing as UNICEF and targeting college students with offers of paid internships via email and social media. In many of these scam job offers, the scammers are either asking for personal information of their targeted victims or asking for application fees. UNICEF never asks for application fees and does not post job offers through emails or social media. UNICEF only advertises its employment opportunities on its global Careers website and the Vacancies page, or on the websites of its National Committees. UNICEF also utilizes bona fide and established media, newspapers, as well as online professional platforms (e.g. LinkedIn) and job boards to disseminate its vacancies.
TIP
Always independently check out whether the company is legitimate. If the recruiter is using the name of a legitimate company, confirm with their HR department if they are indeed offering employment and how to apply. Also, never pay up front fees to employment companies even if they promise a “guaranteed” refund. Finally and most importantly, never give your Social Security number and bank account number to any company you have only had contact with online. While a legitimate employer will need your Social Security number, it isn’t required until you are actually hired. You should also be careful about the personal information that you include on your resume to make sure that it does not contribute to possible identity theft.
If you receive an email from a recruiter for a company and the email address ends with gmail.com or some other personal address, you can be sure that it is a scam, as legitimate recruiters use corporate email addresses.
It is always an indication that you are involved with a scam is when you receive a check for more than what is owed you and you are asked to wire the difference back to the sender. This is the basis of many scams including mystery shopper scams. Whenever you receive a check, wait for your bank to tell you that the check has fully cleared before you consider the funds as actually being in your account. Don’t rely on your bank giving you provisional credit which is given after a few days, but which will be rescinded once a check bounces and never accept a check for more than what is owed with the intention to send back the rest.
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Scam of the day – March 9, 2026 – Facebook Marketplace Payment Scams: How Zelle, Venmo & P2P Overpayment Fraud Targets Sellers
Facebook Marketplace is a popular and convenient place for people to buy and sell things so, of course, scammers are drawn to it. Scams on Facebook Marketplace have increased dramatically in the last couple of years. A recent scam turning up on Facebook Marketplace starts when you list an item for more than a few hundred dollars. Shortly thereafter you are contacted by a scammer posing as a legitimate buyer who wants you to use Zelle, Venmo or some other P2P Service to pay you for the item. Peer to Peer Payment Payment Services (P2P) such a Zelle are used by many people to quickly and conveniently send money electronically from your credit card or bank account. Sending money through Zelle only requires you to enter the recipient’s phone number or email address.
Then the fun begins (for the scammer). You next receive an email that purports to have been sent by Zelle indicating that the buyer paid you through a Zelle “business account” and that you need to upgrade your personal Zelle account to a business account in order to receive the payment from the scammer posing as the buyer. You are then told that in order to upgrade your account, the amount sent to you needs to be increased by $300. The scammer then tells you that he or she will gladly send you an additional $300 through Zelle in order to enable the transaction if you merely refund the excess payment to them through Zelle. Of course, soon after refunding the $300, which was never paid by the scammer to begin with, the scam victim realizes he or she has just been scammed out of $300.
TIPS
Unfortunately, Zelle has proven to be easily exploited by scammers and unlike scams targeting your credit cards directly, you may not have as much protection under the law to get your money back if you do get scammed. Although the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued guidelines last year indicating that all online money transfers such as this that were done as a scam should be reimbursed by the bank, many banks are refusing to refund money lost by the scam victims.
Making matters worse, while you can tie a credit card to your Venmo account (although they will charge you 3% each time you use it), Zelle requires you to either tie your bank account directly to the Zelle account or your debit card to the account. Either way, if a scammer gets access to your Zelle account, you have turned over your bank account to the scammer.
Also, while Zelle has business accounts, you don’t need to upgrade your account in order to receive a payment from a Zelle business account. Frankly, I don’t think anyone should use Zelle, Venmo or any of the other P2P services for anything other than sending small amounts to friends and family. The potential for scams is too great and your ability to get reimbursed is low.
Finally, anytime someone sends you an overpayment for whatever reason and asks for you to send funds back, you should be skeptical as this is always a scam.
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Scam of the day – March 8, 2026 – AI Investment Scams – How AI and Crypto Scams Target Uninformed Investors
Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff who stole 50 billion dollars from unsuspecting victims may be the last person from whom you would accept investing advice, but in fact, his advice, as contained in a 2014 jailhouse interview Madoff gave to the Wall Street Journal is helpful to people hoping to avoid the fate of Madoff’s many victims. With great “chutzpah,” Madoff blamed his victims for their losses. He said that his investors were “sophisticated people” who should have known better. “People asked me all the time, how did I do it. And I refused to tell them, and they still invested. Things have to make sense to you. You should ask good questions.” About this he is correct. No one should ever invest in anything that they do not totally understand.
And this leads us to Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is a term describing sophisticated technologies that enables computers to comprehend and even learn similar to actual human intelligence. AI can be used to create a wide variety of content such as writing stories or music that previously could only be done by humans. It’s capabilities are constantly being touted in news stories and online posts. Scammers are always alert to whatever is capturing the interest of the public and, in this case, scammers are already contacting people falsely claiming they have developed AI programs that can make investment decisions guaranteed to make large profits. In particular, the scammers are tying their AI claims to investments involving cryptocurrencies which many people invest in, but don’t fully understand which is a dangerous combination.
Scammers have actually used AI to create YouTube videos touting cryptocurrency investments showing the CEO of the company persuading people to invest with his company. In this case, however, the CEO doesn’t exist. His image and voice were merely creations of AI.
TIPS
The bottom line is that Bernie Madoff was right about one thing. No one should ever invest in anything without totally understanding the investment and the inherent risks. If you understand cryptocurrencies and still wish to invest in them, that is fine, but all investment decisions should be made only after being properly informed. You may want to check out the SEC’s investor education website at www.investor.gov.
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/
Here is a link to the SEC’s warning about possible problems you can encounter when investing in Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.
https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-bulletins/investoralertsia_bitcoin.html
Finally, YouTube is not the place to go to in order to find investments.
Scam of the day – March 7, 2026 – PayPal Invoice Scam: How Scammers Use Real PayPal Accounts to Steal Your Data
Today’s Scam of the day is one I first warned you about in the Scam of the day for March 3, 2023, but it is still being effectively used by scammers. I also have warned you in the past about a PayPal scam in which you receive a phony invoice that appears to come from Paypal or some other company with which you do business, but if you look at the email from which it is sent, you will see that the email was sent from someone who has no relation to the company it purports to be. However, in this new scam, you get a phony invoice that not only appears to come from PayPal, but actually does come from PayPal and a link in the email to “View and Pay Invoice” that actually would take you to PayPal and an active invoice. The email has a phone number for you to call if you have a question about the invoice and if you do call the phone number, a scammer will promptly answer the phone where you will be advised to download a remote administration tool that gives the scammer remote access to your computer purportedly to help find the problem, but in actuality what you will have done is give the scammer access to your computer and all of the passwords to all of your accounts.
The truth is that the scammers open PayPal Business accounts which enables them to be able to send invoices from PayPal which makes them appear legitimate when they indeed are sent to you by PayPal. The customer service number that they provide in the invoice does not, however, take you to PayPal, but rather to the scammer who then asks you to give them remote access to your computer to straighten the matter out.
TIPS
Whenever you get an email or invoice such as this which appears to come from a legitimate source, don’t click on links or call the phone numbers in the invoice. Rather call the real customer service number which you can get online. It is also interesting to note that if you call the real customer service number for PayPal, you will have to go through a number of prompts before you get to speak to a real person, however, the scammers customer service number is immediately answered by a person.
This scam and many tech support scams ask you to give remote access to your computer which is something you should not do under almost all circumstances. Giving someone remote access to your computer gives them access to everything on your computer and can lead to serious identity theft.
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Scam of the day – March 6, 2026 -How to Protect Yourself From Iranian Cyberattacks Amid Rising Geopolitical Tensions
While conventional military attacks of the United States and Israel against Iran have prompted Iranian missile and drone strikes against American military bases throughout the Middle East as well as against American embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, an additional threat is that of cyberattacks by Iranian hackers and pro Iranian hacktivist groups against American infrastructure and American companies. Iran has shown the ability to perpetrate such attacks in the past such as in 2012 when Iranian hackers used DDoS attacks against 46 major banks and financial institutions as well as attacks against health care centers, utility providers and government agencies in 2022. In addition, ordinary scammers will try to take advantage of the war to send phishing and spear phishing emails and text messages intended to lure you into clicking on infected links or provide sensitive personal information.
So what can you do to protect yourself?
Much of what you can do is what we all should be doing regardless of this immediate threat although the need to do so at this time is certainly heightened. Here are some steps to help protect yourself from possible cyberattacks.
TIPS
- Iranian hackers in the past have exploited home networks, routers, phones and Internet of Things devices that have not installed the latest security patches and updates as well as using outdated systems. A good way to do this is to turn on automatic updates for your operating systems and make sure your router is updated and not using a default password. Isolate your Internet of Things devices such as your smart television on a separate guest network on your router. Disable remote management on your router unless you need it.
- Use strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts. Doing so will keep your important accounts more secure in the event that there is a data breach at any of your other accounts.
- Passwords will inevitably be compromised in data breaches and when people may fall for a phishing or spear phishing email or text message that convinces you to provide your password. Scammers can be very convincing. The best thing you can do to protect yourself in this instance is to use dual factor authentication on all of your accounts.
- Be particularly wary of any social media posts, emails, text messages or phone calls related to the war that ask you to click on links, download attachments or provide personal information or make a contribution. Verify.
- Backup your important data such as health care records and bank account records in the cloud and on a portable hard drive to protect you from DDoS attacks that may temporarily shut down your bank or health care provider’s online presence.
- Monitor your online accounts and your credit reports regularly. Monitoring your credit report can be done for free as often as every week through this website. https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action This is the only website to use to monitor your credit reports for free. Scammers set up phony free credit report sites that may have hidden charges or steal your information.
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Scam of the day – March 5, 2026 – How Scam Artists Exploit Psychology to Steal Your Money
Scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists have a knowledge of psychology that Freud would have envied. They know how to appeal to every human emotion to lure us into becoming a scam victim. Scam artists can adapt their art to paint whatever picture they sense will make us vulnerable to their con. They know how to appeal to our own particular weaknesses and psychological makeup.
They appeal to whatever works. They construct a network of “people like us” whom we trust; they trumpet legitimate and impressive-sounding business connections; they appeal to our fears; they appeal to our friendship; they appeal to our optimism; they appeal to our desire for quick and easy solutions to life’s problems; they appeal to our generosity; and they appeal to our greed.
Some scams can be so sophisticated that they can be hard to recognize, so how can you identify a scam before it is too late?
TIPS
One of the best ways of determining if you are involved with a scam is how the scammer requests payment.
If they ask for payment through a gift card, it is definitely a scam. No legitimate business transaction asks for payment by gift cards. No governmental agency accepts gift cards as payments.
If they send you a check for more than what is owed you and ask you under a variety of different pretexts to deposit the check and wire the excess money back to them, it is a scam. The overpayment check scam is used in many different scams, but it always ends up with the victim depositing the legitimate appearing check, getting provisional credit in the victim’s account, wiring money from the account and then having the counterfeit check bounce, the provisional credit rescinded and the money wired from the victim’s own funds in the account gone forever.
If they require payment by a wire from your bank, Western Union or other similar companies it is also a red flag that you are dealing with a scam. Wired payments are quick and easy for the scammer to maintain his or her anonymity.
If they ask you to go to a Cryptocurrency ATM and buy cryptocurrency and use a QR code to send it to the scammer’s account, it is a scam.
If they demand Zelle or Venmo for a business transaction, it is a scam.
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Scam of the day – March 4, 2026 – Massachusetts Becomes Latest State to Sue Cryptocurrency ATM Company
A report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) indicates a 1,000 % increase in money lost to scammers through Bitcoin ATMs in the last three years with consumers reporting losses of around $333 million between January and November of 2025. Bitcoin and other 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 cryptocurrencies 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 all 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. According to the FTC, people over 60 years old were more than three times more likely to report losing money to a cryptocurrency ATM scam with an average loss of $10,000.
Recently, Massachusetts became the latest state to sue a crypto ATM operator, in this case Bitcoin Depot for enabling criminals to use their machines to scam people. According to the lawsuit, more than half of the money that went through Bitcoin Depot ATMs between August 2023 and January 2025 was related to scams.
TIPS
Protecting yourself from these imposter 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 – March 3, 2026 – New Development in QR Code Scams
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 can 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.
The most common places where you will find phony QR codes is on parking meters where the phony QR code is put on as a sticker over the legitimate QR code, in restaurants, in phishing emails, on social media posts or on unordered packages delivered to your home. Now, however, scammers are using QR codes to scam you in a new way. The new QR code scam starts with an email that appears to come from a company with which you do business informing you that you need to update your account or your account will be closed. In order to update your account, you are instructed to scan the QR code in the email which takes you to a website that looks like the real website for the company that the scammer is posing as and asks you to input your username and password. People falling for this scam end up giving access to their account to the scammer.
What makes this QR code scam particularly dangerous is that more and more scammers are using QR codes in phishing emails rather than malware infected links or links that take you to phony websites where you are lured into providing personal information because while security software is able to recognize and screen out malicious links, it cannot recognize malicious QR codes thereby making those phishing emails likely to avoid detection by your security software.
TIPS
As I often say, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” If you receive such an email the first thing you should do is check the email address of the sender. If it doesn’t appear legitimate or does not appear to have a relation to the company it purports to be from, you can be confident that it is a scam. However, in many instances the email address may look legitimate even though it is not. In that case, you still shouldn’t trust the QR code, but rather should contact the company at a phone number or website that you have confirmed is legitimate to confirm that you don’t have to update your account.
This scam also points out the importance of using dual factor authentication on all of your accounts because even if someone manages to steal your username and password, they will not be able to access your account.
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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