ROCHESTER, N.Y. – One out of three of you have been scammed in the last year. That’s why recognizing the red flags are so important.
According to LexisNexis, every dollar lost to a scammer costs your bank more than $4 in part because of the effort it takes to investigate fraud. But my research has revealed that if you authorized the transaction, even if you can prove you were scammed, the bank is less likely to restore that money to your account. Consumers have to be the first line of defense.
Americans lost $12.5 billion to fraud last year, a 25% increase over the year before. According to the FTC, people lost the most money to investment scams followed by imposter scams. Romanda Gibson-Stevenson, vice president for community management for JP Morgan Chase says those are the scams they’re seeing most frequently.
“Where they are individuals who are posing as trusted companies or individuals trying to take advantage of our customers,” Gibson-Stevenson said.
That’s the technique used by the scammers I recently exposed. They were impersonating Geek Squad in an effort to get folks’ banking information. I called the fraudster to find out how he operated.
“It’s auto-renewing today so this money is coming out of my account today?” I asked the scammer.
The scammer said I needed to act now to reverse the charges. That’s a giant red flag.
“They will play on a sense of urgency. These scammers they want you to act now,” Gibson-Stevenson said.
That’s because you’re more likely to act without thinking.
“A bank or a reputable business will never ask you to give your personal information like your social security number, your account number and all those things,” Gibson-Stevenson said.
In this version of the Geek Squad scam, the thief wanted me to go to a website called AnyDesk.com, giving the scammer control of my computer and access to everything on it. But often scammers just want to fool you in giving them the info they need to take your cash.
“If you can hear anything out of the sound of my voice today, community do not disclose any identifiable information to anyone that calls you because you do not want to give them the tools that they need to impersonate you and to steal your money,” Gibson-Stevenson said.
Romanda works right here in Rochester and often hosts workshops on how to recognize a scam. If you’d like to attend one, just ask about times and dates of the next workshop at any Chase branch. Chase also offers free credit monitoring and you don’t have to be a customer. Experian and Credit Karma offer free monitoring as well. Recent changes in the law also allows you to get free credit reports from each of the credit bureaus once a week. Click here for that. I have links to all of them in the body of this story on our website, WHEC.com.
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Consumer Alert: Recognizing a scam’s red flags WHEC.com.
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