Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – August 11, 2023 – Maui Fire Charity Scams
Natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires are common occurrences. Recently Maui in Hawaii has suffered devastating wildfires that have destroyed property and taken lives. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and earthquakes bring out the best in people who want to donate to charities to help the victims. Unfortunately natural disasters also bring out the worst in scammers who are quick to take advantage of the generosity of people by contacting them posing as charities, but instead of collecting funds to help the victims of these natural disasters, these scam artists steal the money for themselves under false pretenses.
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.
TIPS
Never provide credit card information over the phone to anyone whom you have not called or in response to an email or text message. Before you give to any charity, you may wish to check out the charity with http://www.charitynavigator.org where you can learn whether or not the charity itself is a scam. 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.
Some legitimate charities involved with the relief effort in Maui include the Maui Fire Relief Fund https://ignite.stratuslive.com/auw/get-involved/donate/mauirelief
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Scam of the day – August 10, 2023 – Another Lottery Scam
By now everyone is aware that a single winning ticket for the 1.48 billion dollar MegaMillions jackpot was sold in Florida. However, merely because the lottery drawing has been completed, does not mean that scams related to the drawing have ended. Year after year, lottery scams are one of the most common and profitable scams for scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists. What is now happening is that people are being contacted by emails, text messages and informed by the scammers that although they did not win the top prize, they did win one of the lesser prizes which can be as much as a million dollars. The only catch is that you need to prepay administrative fees or income taxes on your winnings before your prize will be sent to you.
TIPS
Because hundreds of millions of tickets were sold for this latest Megamillions drawing it is a good chance that when you are contacted by a scammer posing as a Megamillions lottery agent, that you may have purchased a ticket or two, however, it is important to remember that the lottery commissions that operate Megamillions do not have any information as to who purchased particular tickets so if you get a text message or an email from someone saying that your ticket is a winner, it is a scam. In addition, administrative fees are never assessed as a condition of receiving a legitimate lottery prize. As for income taxes, legitimate lotteries never collect taxes from you as a condition of claiming your prize. Either, as Megamillions does, the taxes are deducted from your prize before you receive the prize or, as some lotteries operate, the entire prize is sent to you and you are responsible for paying the taxes yourself to the IRS.
Even if you get an email that contains the logo of Megamillions or some other legitimate lottery, it is important to remember that it is easy to counterfeit the logo to make the email look legitimate.
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Scam of the day – August 9, 2023 – MyChart Phishing Scam
This is a very convincing phishing email. It contained the first name of the Scamicide reader who forwarded it to me. I have blocked out the name to protect the reader’s privacy. I also have disarmed the links contained in the email which, if clicked on, would have taken you to an official appearing site where you would have been prompted to provide your username and password. Providing this information to a scammer would result in identity theft.
Here is a copy of the MyChart phishing email presently being circulated
Hello XXXX,
You have a new message in MyChart! Please sign in to read your message.
Thanks for using MyChart
Sign In to MyChart
MyChart is available on the go!
To change what notifications you receive and how you receive them,
log in to MyChart and choose Notifications from the Preferences menuTIPS
This is a particularly insidious phishing email because the email address from which it was sent could appear to be legitimate and is not one that is obviously an email address of someone whose email account was hacked and made a part of a botnet of computers used to send out such phishing emails. Also, the targeted victim’s name was included in the email.
As with all phishing emails, two things can happen if you click on the links provided. Either you will be sent to a legitimate looking, but phony website where you will be prompted to input personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft or, even worse, merely by clicking on the link, you may download keystroke logging malware that will steal all of your personal information from your computer or smartphone and use it to make you a victim of identity theft.
If you receive an email like this and think it may possibly be legitimate, merely call your health care provider where you can confirm that it is a scam, but make sure that you dial the telephone number correctly because scammers have been known to buy phone numbers that are just a digit off of legitimate numbers to trap you if you make a mistake in dialing the real number.
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Scam of the day – August 8, 2023 – Mavis Wanczyk Lottery Scams Continue
She’s back! I have been writing about scams related to Mavis Wanczyk for six years but recently I have received many emails from Scamicide readers telling me about various new incarnations of a variety of scams that share the same hook which is that Mavis Wanczyk is giving money away to lucky people. Many of you may not remember the name of Mavis Wanczyk, but she was the lucky winner of a 758 million dollar Powerball drawing in 2017. Not long after she claimed her prize, a scam started appearing in which many people received emails with the message line referring to the Mavis Wanczyk Cash Grant. The email indicated that you were chosen to receive a large cash grant from Mavis Wanczyk. All the lucky strangers receiving the emails had to do was provide personal information in order to qualify for the grant. In addition, phony social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were also set up in Ms. Wanczyk’s name through which people were contacted with the same phony offer of free money informing them that in order to qualify for the grant they merely needed to provide personal information.
Phony Mavis Wanczyk Instagram accounts continue to pop up as quick as Instagram learns about them and takes them down. Recently I received an email from a Scamicide reader who had been texting with someone he thought was Mavis Wanczyk through Instagram believing that he was going to be getting a gift from Ms. Wanczyk. Fortunately, he checked with me before he got scammed.
Another version of the Mavis Wanczyk lottery scam that victimized a Scamicide reader started with a text message purportedly from Mavis Wanczyk informing the targeted victim that she would give $15,000 to the targeted victim. All the victim had to do was pay some fees. After paying $3,786.68 through untraceable Bitcoin cryptocurrency, the victim still had not received anything who was then prompted to send an additional $300 for expedited delivery of his check. After paying that amount, the scammers still had not sent anything, but did demand access to the victim’s Facebook account. Finally, the greedy scammers even threatened to turn in the victim to the FBI unless they were paid $500. It does take quite a bit of gall for criminals to threaten victims with reporting them to law enforcement, but gall does not appear to be in short supply when it comes to scammers.
TIPS
It is difficult to win a lottery you have entered. It is impossible to win one that you have never entered and neither lottery winners, nor anyone else is sending out messages through the Internet offering free money to anyone who responds with personal information. Never give out personal information that can make you vulnerable to identity theft unless you have absolutely verified that the party requesting the personal information is legitimate and has a legitimate need for the information. Also never pay anything to a lottery claiming you owe fees in order to claim your prize. This is a telltale sign of a scam. No legitimate lottery requires the payment of a fee to collect your winnings or requires you to pay the lottery income taxes on the prize. While income taxes are due on lottery winnings, those taxes are either deducted by the lottery sponsor before giving you your prize or the prize is given to you in full and you are responsible for the payment of any taxes. No lottery collects taxes on behalf of the IRS.
You should never give anyone access to your social media accounts because scammers use your account to scam others who trust you and fall for scams that appear to come from you.
Finally and most importantly, remember neither Mavis Wanczyk nor any other lottery winner is giving away money to strangers.
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Scam of the day – August 7, 2023 – Watch Out – You Can’t Trust Alexa
Alexa is tremendously helpful for so many things. If you need to know the score of last night’s baseball game, if you want to know what the weather will be today or even to turn down your thermostat. for you. And it is not just Alexa. Siri or Google Home will do the same tasks for you. However, there is one task that you should not trust Alexa and the other devices to perform. You should never ask it to call a tech support or customer service number for you.
For years I have warned you about phony tech support scams done by scammers who establish bogus tech support websites for your favorite tech companies, such as Facebook and Instagram. By manipulating the algorithms used by Google and other search engines, the scammers manage to get their bogus websites into top positions in Google and other search engine searches. These phony tech support websites are used to scam you out of money or personal information which they use to make you a victim of identity theft. Scammers also use similar tactics to scam people looking for help with the repair of common household appliances, such as refrigerators and washing machines.
People looking through a search engine for a telephone number for customer service or a company’s warranty center are often taken to one of the phony websites and when they call the telephone number found in the phony website they are told that they can set up an appointment for a repair person by merely providing their name and location. Then they are often told that they need to pay a small fee which they can do by credit card or debit card for a speedy next-day expedited service call. Unfortunately, this is all a scam. No service person comes the next day, however, your credit card, or even worse, your debit card is used by the scammer. But it isn’t just people who are taken to these phony search engine listings. Alexa, Siri and Google Home are susceptible to being scammed by merely picking the top position in a search engine search and putting you in touch with a scammer.
TIPS
Don’t bother Alexa with looking up and calling tech support or customer service numbers. The best place to look for a telephone number for tech support, customer service or warranty information is on the company’s official website, on your bill or in the warranty documents that came with your appliance or device. Also, be careful when you call the real number for tech support or customer service. Clever scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists purchase telephone numbers that are a single digit off of the legitimate phone numbers for many companies’ tech support or customer service numbers in order to take advantage of common consumer misdials.
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Scam of the day – August 6, 2023 – FBI Warns About New Twist on Tech Support Scam
Tech support scams in which consumers are tricked by scammers into believing there is a problem with their computers that require the expensive services of scammers constitute a major problem. Tech support scams are increasingly common and victimize consumers 60 years or older about five times more often than people between the ages of 20 and 59 according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The most common tech support scams start with popups on your computer that provide notices of security problems that contain telephone numbers for you to call to fix the problem, Whenever you get a pop-up, email, 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. If your screen freezes, all you need to do is just turn off your computer and restart it. If you are concerned that you may be experiencing a real security problem you can contact tech support at the real tech companies directly by phone or by email using the phone number and email addresses you find on their respective websites.
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.
In a recent twist on this scam, the scammers inform the victim of the scam that they are eligible for a potential refund for a tech service, but that the only way they can refund the money is by connecting to the victim’s computer and depositing the money electronically into the victim’s bank account. Then the scammer informs the victim that “accidently” they have deposited more money into the victim’s account than they are owed and the scammer tells the victim that unless the victim withdraws the extra money in cash and sends it to the scammer, he will lose his job. The scammer then instructs the victim to wrap the money in a magazine and use shipping companies such as UPS or Federal Express to send the cash to the scammer.
TIPS
Often when your computer is frozen and you receive a pop-up ad purporting to tell you that you have a major security problem and warning you that you should not shut down or restart your computer because, they tell you, it would cause serious damage to your computer, the best thing you can do is shut down your computer and restart it.
If you are truly concerned about a security problem, contact tech support at the real tech companies you use at a phone number or email address that you have confirmed is accurate rather than a number or email address from the pop-up.
Never download software or give remote access to your computer to anyone whom you have not contacted.
To see the FBI’s recent warning, click on this link.https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2023/PSA230718#:~:text=The%20FBI%20is%20warning%20the,s)%2C%20via%20shipping%20companies.
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Scam of the day – August 5, 2023 – FTC Imposes Record Fine Against Robocallers
Over the years I have written numerous times about the problems presented by robocalls and with good reason. Automated robocalls which, for commercial purposes, are illegal, are the number one consumer complaint reported by the public to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at a cost to consumers of billions of dollars each year. Robocalls are used by scammers to perpetrate a wide variety of scams. The ease by which illegal robocalls may be made by computers using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) accounts for much of the problem. Most of the robocalls received in the United States originate overseas.
Earlier this week the FTC imposed a record fine of $299,997,000 on an international network of companies including Sumco Panama, Virtual Telecom, Davis Telecom, Geist Telecom, Fugle Telecom, Tech Direct, Mobi Telecom, and Posting Express for violating a variety of federal laws when they made more than five billion robocalls involving illegal auto warranties to more than 500 million people in a mere three month period in 2021.
TIPS
While this FTC action is helpful, I am a firm believer that the best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm so here are a number of options we all have for preventing robocalls including a number of apps that for free or a small fee will reduce and, in some instances prevent, robocalls.
Samsung’s SmartCall informs you if the call you are receiving is from a known robocaller. This feature is available with newer Samsung Galaxy phones. Here is a link to information about SmartCall and instructions as to how to activate this app. https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/smart-call/#:~:text=The%20Smart%20Call%20function%20lets,Suspected%20to%20be%20spam
Google also has a spam blocker that will warn you when you are receiving a robocall and your screen will turn red. Here is a link to information about the app and how to install it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.dialer&hl=en
AT&T also offers free apps to block robocalls on iPhones and Android phones. Here is a link to information about these apps.
https://www.att.com/features/security-apps.html?partner=LinkShare&siteId=TnL5HPStwNw-yrUS1uDw9WGvN._xt67yew&source=ECay0000000CEL00O
Verizon’s CallerName ID is a free service for iPhones and Android phones that will alert you to suspected robocallers. Here is a link to Verizon’s app.
https://www.verizonwireless.com/solutions-and-services/caller-name-id/
T-Mobile offers a free scam blocker of known robocallers for Android phones which you can activate by merely dialing #662#
Sprint offers a paid service to protect your iPhone or Android phone from robocalls. For more information, use this link
https://www.sprint.com/en/landings/scamprotection.html
Finally, you can just choose to ignore any calls that come from numbers you do not recognize. This is a good option. If they are legitimate calls, they will leave a message and you can call them back.
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Scam of the day – August 4, 2023 – Phony Job Recruiting Scam
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.
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission warned 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.
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 – August 3, 2023 – New IRS Refund Scam
Recently the IRS issued a warning about emails from scammers posing as IRS agents that lure victims into clicking on links and providing personal information that leads to identity theft. The subject line of the email reads “Claim your tax refund online. The grammar and spelling in many of these emails is pretty atrocious which is a red flag that you are dealing with a scammer.
One email presently being circulated reads: “We cheked an error in the calculation of your tax from the last payment, amounting to $927.22. In order for us to return the excess payment, you need to create a E-Refund after which the funds will be credited to your specified bank. Please click below to claim your tax refund. If we are unable to complete within 3 days, all pending will be cancelled.”
Of course, if you do click on the link it will either download malware such as ransomware or keystroke logging malware that will lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft or you will be taken to a phony IRS website where you will be prompted to provide personal information that will result in your becoming a victim of identity theft.
TIPS
This is an easy scam to avoid. As I often tell you, whenever you get a phone call, text message or email that purports to be from the IRS, you can be confident that it is a scam because the IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by phone, text messages or emails.
Also, you should never click on a link in an email or provide personal information in response to an email unless you have absolutely confirmed that the email was legitimate.
In regard to information about any refunds to which you may be entitled, you should go to the IRS website section which will provide you with information about any refunds to which you may be entitled. Here is the link.https://www.irs.gov/refunds
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Scam of the day – August 2, 2023 – Hotel Credit Card Scam
Recently there have been reports about a “new” scam that I first warned you about in 2013. It involves calls to hotel guests purportedly from a clerk at the front desk of the hotel informing you that the hotel needs your credit card information again because of a computer error in processing your card. Unfortunately, people responding to this call by providing their credit card number end up providing their credit card number to the scammer who calls them and not to a clerk of the hotel. Often these calls come early in the morning, when the scammer hopes to awaken someone who may not take the time to consider the legitimacy of the request.
TIPS
Whenever you get a telephone call, you can never be sure that the person calling you is who he or she represents himself or herself to be. If you are in a hotel and receive such a call, you should hang up and either go to the front desk in person or call the front desk at a telephone number that you know is accurate. Whenever you get a telephone call requesting personal information such as a credit card number for whatever reason, do not give the information to the caller. Rather, call the company or agency that purported to call you at a number that you know is correct and not a number that the caller gives you.
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