In the newly released Federal Trade Commission report the top scams for 2022 were named. For the Quad Cities and Peoria regions, the top five were internet services and job opportunity scams, telephone scams, prizes, sweepstakes and lotteries, online shopping, and at number one for last year was imposter scams, which Security Savings Bank Vice President Dorothy Ricketts says covers a wide range that customers face:
“It could be romance scam. It could be someone claiming to be a Federal Agent of the IRS or some other entity saying that you are in trouble. They could say they are calling from the Social security Administration and tell you that you have not signed up for a program that you need. It could be a text looking like it comes from your bank to tell you that your card has been frozen, please contact them and give us the three numbers off the back and the expiration date and the last four digits to confirm everything. All of these approaches are coming from imposters. Part of their goal is number one to get your personal information or tied for number one is to get your money. You will find that they ask you to send your money in uncommon, unusual methods that you may not even be familiar with.”
According to the Federal Trade Commission, $8.8 billion was lost from consumers to fraudulent scams in 2022, an increase of more than thirty percent from the previous year.
Hear more from Ricketts on identifying imposter scams below:
