Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – October 21, 2023 – Utility Company Free Money Scam
Recently customers and even people who aren’t customers of Columbia Gas of Ohio have been receiving letters from scammers posing as Columbia Gas of Ohio with counterfeit checks. The letters tell the targeted victims to deposit the check and then email the scammer posing as the gas company a copy of the deposit slip in order to confirm that the free money has been deposited. Of course no company is giving away free money to anyone. The method behind the madness of this scam is that if you deposit the check (which of course will bounce) and send the deposit slip to the scammer, you will have provided the scammer with your bank account number and your bank’s routing number.
Unfortunately, once the scammer has your bank account number and the routing number for your bank which is used for wire transfers, they are able to use that information to make purchases where money is wired from your account and the goods purchased are sent to the scammer who then can sell the goods thereby laundering the proceeds of the scam. Other scammers will create counterfeit checks using this information and make checks payable to themselves. Some scammers will even use your banking information to set up recurring payments such as for utilities.
TIPS
Never give your bank account information to anyone or any company that you have not thoroughly researched to make sure that they are legitimate. In fact, if you are a bit paranoid, like me (remembering even paranoids have enemies) you can avoid the problem altogether by not providing your bank account information to anyone and have payments sent to you by a check.
If, however, you do become a victim of this type of scam where a scammer has your bank account information, freeze your accounts immediately and notify the police and the fraud department of your bank. Change your online banking password and make sure you are using dual factor authentication as well. Fortunately, if you notify your bank within sixty days of receiving your monthly statement indicating that your bank account has been accessed you are not liable for the money taken from your account.
The good news is that for this type of wiring of funds fraud, you are not liable for the money withdrawn from your account if you notify the bank within 60 days of when you receive your monthly statement. Frankly you should notify your bank within 60 seconds of receiving your monthly statement indicating the crime. Banks are required to investigate the crime promptly and replace the money into your account within one business day of determining that the loss of funds from your account was fraudulent.
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Scam of the day – October 20, 2023 – Student Loan Forgiveness Scams Soaring
I have written often about phony student loan debt relief companies and with good reason. More than forty-two million Americans have student loans with an outstanding balance of more than 1.4 trillion dollars so it is no surprise that scammers are focusing their attention on these students and former students through scams that falsely promise to provide debt relief. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that President Biden’s program for student loan forgiveness was unconstitutional. Interest on student loans began accruing again on September 1st and repayments resumed in October, leaving many people scrambling as to what to do about their student loans.
Leaping into this opportunity in the last two weeks scammers posing as companies purporting to help eliminate student loans placed more than 350,000 illegal robocalls.
As you can imagine many people with large student loans are susceptible to scammers promising to reduce or eliminate student loan debt. Scammers promoting phony loan forgiveness services are targeting people through robocalls, emails and text messages. The old adage still is true. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. Many of these student loan debt relief scammers promise quick loan forgiveness, which is unrealistic. In addition, you should never pay any upfront fees for student loan debt relief assistance. Those fees are illegal and are a sure indication that you are being scammed.
TIPS
For information you can trust about federal student loan repayment option, go to https://studentaid.gov/repay . There you can learn about loan deferments, forbearance, repayment and loan forgiveness programs and there is never an application fee. If you owe private student loans, contact your loan servicer directly. You can also look into student loan refinancing rather than consolidating the loans. Refinancing student loans can result in a lower interest rate.
Also, remember my motto, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” Don’t trust scammers merely because they use names that sound like they are affiliated with the government. You also should never share your FSA ID with anyone.
Here also is a link to an FTC video that explains student loan scams and what you can do to protect yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TjSI4Q6ztQ
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Scam of the day – October 19, 2023 – Israel Gaza Charity Scams
Human tragedies such as terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel and the resulting dire situation in Gaza bring out the best charitable impulses of many people, but unfortunately, they also bring out the worst impulses in scammers who use tragedies such as this to solicit contributions to phony charities.
You may be receiving phone calls, emails or text messages seeking contributions to charities that purport to be helping the victims, but unfortunately, whenever you receive a phone call, text message or email, you can never be sure that the caller is 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 are 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 or text message you cannot be sure as to whether the person contacting you is legitimate or not.
In addition to charity scams related to the attack on Israel and the Israeli response, you can expect to receive emails, text messages and social media posts that purport to provide important information about the situation in Israel and Gaza. These communications may require you to click on links to obtain the information or videos. Unfortunately, if you do click on these links you may end up downloading dangerous malware on to your phone or computer. Never click on links from sources that you have not verified as legitimate. As for news and information about the war in the Middle East, the best thing to do is to limit your sources to respected, legitimate news sources with which you are familiar.
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 should check out the charity with http://www.charitynavigator.org where you can learn whether or not the charity itself is a scam. You can also see how much of the money that the legitimate charity collects actually goes toward its charitable purposes and how much it uses for fund raising and administrative costs. Charity Navigator has a vetted list of legitimate charities helping the people of the region. https://www.charitynavigator.org/discover-charities/where-to-give/israel-hamas-conflict/
Also, don’t use your debit card when making a charitable donation because if you are scammed, the laws protecting you are far less than the laws that protect you if you are scammed when using your credit card.
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Scam of the day – October 18, 2023 – FBI Warns About “The Phantom Hacker”
The FBI recently issued a warning about a scam they call “The Phantom Hacker.” The scam starts with a pop-up on your computer, a text message, email or phone call from the scammer posing as a legitimate tech company informing the victim that here appears to be a problem with their computer and that they need to call a tech support number for assistance. When the targeted victim calls the phony tech support number he or she is advised that in order to resolve the problem they need to download a software program that gives the scammer remote access to the victim’s computer. The scammer then informs the victim that their computer has been compromised and that they should then go online to their bank account to see if any funds have been withdrawn by the fictional hacker. The truth is that the victim’s bank account had not, at that point, been hacked, but now through the remote access provided to the scammer, the victim’s bank account is now identified to the scammer. The phony tech support scammer then informs the targeted victim that he or she will soon get a call form their bank’s fraud department with further instructions.
At this point the targeted victim gets a call from another scammer posing as an employee of the bank’s fraud department who tells the targeted victim that their bank account was hacked by a foreign hacker and that in order to protect their funds they must move their money to a safe third party account with the Federal Reserve. The scammer then instructs the targeted victim to wire the money to a “safe” account provided by the scammer. Unfortunately, the money is far from safe and the account to which the funds are wired is an account of the scammer which is often in another country. Once the funds have been wired, it is all but impossible to retrieve them.
TIPS
Whenever you get a pop-up, email, phone call or text message that appears to tell you that you have a security problem with your computer, you should never click on any links contained in the message or call the telephone number provided. Real tech companies do not use pop-ups, phone calls or text messages to tell you that you have suffered a security breach.
If you call the scammers in response to concerns about your security, they often ask for you to enable them to get remote access to your computer to assess the problem. Providing remote access to anyone to your computer can lead to a myriad of problems including identity theft and the downloading of ransomware. Neither AOL, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft or any of the other tech companies ever ask for remote access to your computer to fix problems.
No bank will ever ask you to wire funds out of your account to protect your funds. Wiring funds is a favorite method of payment for scammers because once funds have been wired, they are all but impossible to get back.
If you have any questions that you may have a problem with your bank account, merely call your bank directly at a phone number that you know is legitimate and not the number provided in communications such as emails, text messages or phone calls which are most likely from scammers.
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Scam of the day – October 17, 2023 – Credit Reporting Bureaus Extend Permanently Free Weekly Credit Reports
Your credit report is an important document that can affect not only your ability to get a loan, but even your ability to get a job, an apartment or insurance. Indications of identity theft often first turn up on your credit report where you can find out if someone has used your name to commit financial crimes which is why it is very important to regularly monitor your credit report. Federal law has long provided for you to be able to get a free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies annually. This is an important thing for everyone to do to make sure their credit report is accurate and that you have not become a victim of identity theft which is often first noticed on your credit report.
In response to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion agreed to provide weekly free credit reports to everyone through April of 2021. This deadline for free weekly credit reports was extended twice temporarily and now the three credit reporting bureaus have made the right to get a free credit report weekly permanent.
Scammers use the free credit report law to scam you in two ways. “Legitimate” companies may offer you a free credit report, but if you read the fine print, you will learn that you also have signed up for services that you may not wish to have that the companies charge you for each month. True scammers will set up realistic looking websites that appear to offer a free credit report, but when you input the necessary information to obtain your free credit report, such as your Social Security number, you actually are providing it to an identity thief who uses the information to steal your identity.
TIP
Criminals often flunked grammar so one thing to look for to determine if you are on the legitimate website to obtain your free credit report is to look for misspellings and grammatical errors that scammers often make. Although the domain names for websites offering what appear to be free credit reports appear to be legitimate, the actual official free credit report website address where you can now get your free weekly credit reports is https://www.annualcreditreport.com/requestReport/landingPage.action
I urge you to get your free credit reports and review them regularly.
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Scam of the day – October 16, 2023 – Medicare Open Enrollment Scams
The annual open enrollment period for Medicare began 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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Scam of the day – October 15, 2023 – Online Job Scams
Like just about everything else we do searching for a job online has become the norm for many job seekers and there are many legitimate online employment websites such as Indeed.com, Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com, however, merely because an ad for a job appears on a legitimate website does not mean that the job is for real. It may be just a scam seeking either personal information to make you a victim of identity theft. Although Indeed.com, Career builder.com, Monster.com and other online employment agencies do their best to screen their ads, they can’t come even close to being perfect.
The Federal Trade Commission is warning people about phony job recruiters using legitimate sites such as Indeed or LinkedIn to contact people asking them to apply for a job on a phony counterfeit website that looks like the website of a legitimate company or schedule an interview where you would be asked for personal information that would lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft. When you apply for a job, it is necessary to provide your Social Security number so many people provide this information in response to these phony job recruitments and end up becoming a victim of identity theft.
In some instances the scammers will copy outdated online job postings of legitimate companies, but include the scammers contact information. Once you contact them, the scammers request your Social Security number or in other instances request your bank account information in order to send you an advance payment, when in reality the scammers merely want to gain access to your bank account.
TIPS
Before providing any personal information or scheduling a virtual interview, go the real company’s website and not through a link provided by the “recruiter.” There you can go to the company’s “career opportunities” or “jobs” page to see if the company actually is hiring and even then you should apply directly through the company’s encrypted site rather than through links provided by the recruiter.
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Scam of the day – October 14, 2023 – Customer Service Number Scam
In the past I have told you about scammers increasingly setting up phony websites that appear to be for customer service or tech support of many of the companies with which we do business. Often the scammers either purchase an ad to appear at the top of a search engine search or they manipulate the algorithms used by Google and other search engines to make their phony customer service number appear high on a search.
A variation on this scam occurs also where scammers purchase telephone numbers that are a single digit off of the legitimate phone numbers for many companies’ tech support or customer support in order to take advantage of common consumer misdials. A Scamicide reader had an issue with his Sprint account and called his customer support phone number where he was told that he was eligible for a special promotion and a gift card if he just provided some personal information. It was at this point that the savvy Scamicide reader realized he had mistakenly called the wrong number which was merely a digit off from the correct Sprint customer support number. He hung up and avoided being scammed.
Others have not been so lucky and have provided personal information that leads to identity theft after misdialing a customer support number.
TIPS
The best place to look for a telephone number for customer support or tech support is right on your bill or the legitimate website of the company. Even when you do call legitimate tech support or customer service telephone numbers take extra care to make sure that you are dialing correctly and not calling a clever scammer who may have purchased a telephone number that is a digit off of the correct phone number in an attempt to ensnare people who may misdial the number.
Also, remember you can’t trust Alexa or Siri to provide you with the correct number because they only access the information appearing at the top of a search engine search. As I indicated earlier, often those numbers are fake numbers put their by scammers.
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Scam of the day – October 13, 2023 – At Home Job May be Money Laundering
Laundering money derived from a scam is an essential element of many scams. Scammers can be extremely clever at distancing themselves from their scams in order to avoid detection. The people they enlist either as willing or unknowing participants in the laundering of the proceeds of a scam are called money mules. Scams in which innocent people are lured into being unknowing money mules are numerous. One of the more common of these involves work at home scams where your job is to receive goods, often electronics that have been shipped to you, inspect them and then reship them to an address provided to you by your new employer.
The problem is that these goods have been purchased with stolen credit cards and you have just become an accomplice to the crime when you ship them to someone else who will then sell them to turn the merchandise into cash. Other times the scammers will say that your job is to receive funds sent to you by the scammer, deposit the funds in your own bank account and wire the funds to people who the scammers tell you are either clients or suppliers of the scammers’ phony company. Finally, money mules are also used is in a variation of the romance scam where you are asked by your romantic partner to wire funds to someone on behalf of the scammer under a variety of pretenses.
Many times the scammers will use the names of legitimate businesses when attempting to lure people into the reshipping scam.
TIP
As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Check out work at home scams with the big two – your local attorney general and the FTC. And, as always, you can Google the name of the particular company offering you the work at home program with the word “scam” next to it and see what turns up.
As for reshipping goods as a work at home job, it is important to remember that there are no such legal jobs for reshippers. They are always a scam and you should steer clear of them. You also should never use your own bank account to transfer funds for an employer. Finally, you should always be skeptical of someone with whom you have recently established an online romantic relationship who either asks you for money (the most common scam) or asks you to pass on money to a third party as directed by the scammer.
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Scam of the day – October 12, 2023 – TikTok Jewelry Scam
For many people, the possibility of getting free jewelry and only having to pay for a shipping fee is just too good to pass up. The truth is that it is too good to be true. Many people were scammed by responding to TikTok videos of a young woman telling her story that she was fired by a jewelry store called Trugala when she was caught shopping while she was supposed to be working. Out of revenge she shares her employee discount code which she says would allow anyone using the discount code to get Trugala’s premium jewelry at for free and only have to pay shipping fees.
There are a lot of problems here. First, the woman in the TikTok video was never fired by Trugala. Rather, they hired her to do the misleading TikTok video and provided the script with the phony story. The truth is that anyone using the employee discount code would not receive premium jewelry, but instead get worthless costume jewelry worth far less than the “shipping fees”
TIPS
A good place to start is that if the story were real, anyone using the employee discount code would have been committing fraud which is a good reason to avoid this scam. Also, as always when a deal sounds too good to be true, it generally is and this scam certainly qualifies in that regard. Finally, you should never shop with any company with which you are not familiar without investigating it thoroughly. Anyone who merely Googled Trugala with the word scam next to it would have found ample evidence that the company was operating a scam.
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