The FBI Warns To Be Careful Of Unsolicited Offers

Someone could be trying to take your money

The FBI is working to help protect the public.

A recent meeting was held by an organization of which I am a member. They were having an FBI agent come and talk about cybersecurity and scams. Since those are hot topics which could affect anyone, I wanted to share some of the take-aways from the information that the FBI agent gave.

People over the age of sixty comprise the largest number of victims of any age group. The losses for that group have been over $1.6 billion.

Some major trends for fraud and scammers at the current time are:

Business Email Compromise — social engineering and computer intrusion

Confidence Fraud/Romance Scams — pull a victim’s heartstrings

Investment — Ponzi and pyramid schemes, crypto scams

Ransomware — Malicious software or malware put on a computer

Tech Support Fraud — pretending to give customer support

Cryptocurrency — preferred method of payment for all types of scams

One of the main things that the agent stressed was to beware of unsolicited calls, emails, texts, etc. If you did not initiate the matter, do not respond. Hang up or cut them off.

Some Other Financial Fraud Red Flags are:

Risk vs. Reward — Too good to be true, Guaranteed high rate of return

Secretive — Told not to tell anyone about it

Timing/pressure — Need to do it “right now”

Only for you — Everyone doesn’t have this chance

Scammers should be locked up, but it is difficult to catch them.

The FBI has an Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) whose mission is “to provide the public with a reliable and convenient reporting mechanism to submit information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning suspected Internet facilitated criminal activity and to develop effective alliances with industry partners. Information is processed for investigative and intelligence purposes for law enforcement and public awareness.” [from their brochure]

The FBI would like people to report scams to the IC3 at www.ic3.gov.

Thank you for reading.

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