Scams & Fraud

It’s the season of giving, and for those in the spirit, telling the difference between a real charity and a fake one can be a challenge. Legitimate charities make a big push at year-end for last-minute annual donations. Scammers know this and make their own end-of-year push to line their pockets.

New AARP Report Highlights Steady Increase in Consumer Fraud

If you’re like many Americans, the arrival of a package at your doorstep is a common occurrence. In the age of digital shopping, it has become harder than ever to keep track of what is coming when and from whom. This new reality has led directly to the rise of the digital package delivery scam.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new shiny object that has captured the world’s attention. It’s also captured the attention of criminal scammers who are using it to make their fraudulent schemes more realistic than ever. One area where AI scams are particularly dangerous is celebrity impostor scams.

One of the oldest scams around involves a criminal getting hold of one of your checks and forging the payee and the amount. Usually this is done by “washing” the check with chemicals to remove the real information you have written on it. Today, with access to new technologies, criminals are “cooking” checks by creating fake versions of real checks using computer programs. These “cooked” checks can be manipulated digitally and either printed or deposited electronically, saving the crook a lot of mess and hassle.

Many of us have used a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment app to split a bill or send money to a friend, and some people even use them for traditional shopping. However, there are inherent risks that exist on these payment apps that everyone should know about.

Most of us do it several times a day. We have a question, need a phone number or are looking for a website, so we open a search engine and type in our request. What happens next is becoming more and more dangerous.

If there is one thing we know, it’s that criminal scammers are not stupid. They often use cutting-edge technologies to make their schemes more sophisticated and harder to detect. However, these same technologies can – and should – be used to protect people as well.

The month of October is National Cyber Security month and AARP is focused on shining a light on the most prevalent online scams including celebrity impostors. Stars like Bruce Springsteen, Trace Adkins and Oprah Winfrey are among thousands of celebrities whose personas have been used by scammers online to solicit money from fans.

More than 369,000 incidents of financial abuse targeting older adults are reported to authorities in the U.S. each year, causing an estimated $4.8 billion in losses. And those numbers likely understate the problem considerably. However, it’s good to remember that there are things we can do to stop elder financial exploitation.