By Danielle Smith of the Public News Service
Republished by Travels With The Post
CHICAGO IL – More than 3,000 Pennsylvania residents became victims of scams during 2023, and suffered financial losses of more than $117 million, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reports. Federal representatives hope to reduce that pain for others in the future, despite scammers’ increasing reliance on technology to fool their targets.
Fraudsters use weather disasters, such as recent hurricanes, to lure unsuspecting Pennsylvanians to shell out dollars to fake charities, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Con artists also are using technology to trick voters into donating to bogus political causes, or to spread false information.
Discovering and ending those and other fraud scams is among the FTC’s many duties. Chicago-based FTC Midwest Regional Office staff attorney Matt Schiltz says impostor scams are the most frequently reported type of fraud.
“Unfortunately, I’ve seen reports that people are using artificial intelligence to clone voices, or at least trying to, so the person calling may sound like a friend or a family member, or a famous person, a politician,” Schiltz observes.
Older Americans are particularly vulnerable. Last year they reported losing more than $1.9 billion to fraud. Sadly, according to the FTC, the actual loss may be as high as $62 billion. The reason: many cases go unreported, which often means problems worsen.
“The Commonwealth ranks seventh in the nation for elder fraud complaints,” The Keystone Newsroom confirms in an article published during May (2024).
Schiltz explains that fraudsters create new, more persuasive scams by improvising on old ones. A recent scam involves a person posing as a bank employee, who contacts potential victims. The scammer tells them they must move their money into another account for protection against tampering or government seizure.
As a result, Schiltz notes the agency is working on several different fronts to combat impostors. A new FTC rules specifically deals with impersonators, and gives the agency “stronger tools to combat the scams,” he adds. “We actually brought our first case under the impersonation rule earlier this year,” the attorney says.
Consumers are encouraged to visit the FTC’s “imposters” webpage to learn more about the variety of scams with which the agency deals. Know of a scammer, or a scam in progress? Don’t keep it to yourself, Schiltz says. Those bad actors can be stopped; he suggests filing a report online.
http://FTC.gov/imposters
http://ReportFraud.FTC.gov
Photo by Vitalik Radko on Deposit Photos, used by Travels With The Post under license