we're going to start off today by first talking about identity theft fraud scams.

We're going to touch briefly on elder fraud.

What happens when you're experiencing identity theft and how that can happen and how to prevent that from happening.

my main job at financial planners is to try to prevent fraud and other forms of risk from happening, and to process various fraud claims and investigate situations where fraud has happened.

fraud is where someone in some way has had their account or card compromised.

And they were not a willing participant in the instance incident where it happened.

The part about being a willing participant is the difficult part, because if you give out your information and you thought you were buying something that is not necessarily fraud, but could instead be a form of a scam or a dispute process.

So the problem with fraud in the US is it is a rapidly growing industry.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, from 2022 to 2023, it grew by $1 billion.

Now, that is only what's been reported as fraud.

And as of 2023, it was a $10 billion industry a year.

And from 2023 to 2024, it will either grow as much or more than it did in the previous year.

Everyone is a common victim of fraud from every age group.

Depending on the type of fraud will depend on what hits that age group in particular more than others.

Example is younger, yet generations tend to be hit more by from work from home scams, while older could be investment scams.

Older exploitation scams, or just identity theft.

But it's pretty much all across the spectrum.

Today I will be discussing the five common scams that I see most often.

We'll start off with romance scams.

That is a scam where someone is trying to build an emotional connection with the victim, to get the victim, to send them money in some way, shape or form.

Romance scams target every person of every age and what it is.

Like I said, they're trying to build that emotional connection.

They will be your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your fiancé.

They were going to say they're going to come live with you, build this new life or you don't want to pay for you to come in.

Now, common things with romance scams is they will.

This is a slow burn scam.

It will start months before they will ever get to the actual questioning of some type of funds.

I've seen romance scams that have been going on for years, but normally it's about six months before you start getting that request for funds.

Actually, I need money for this bill or any money to help move to.

That way I could come be with you or I need you to cash this check.

You can keep the rest of it, but I just need a part of it to pay for my bills.

And then the rest can go towards your bills.

Or I'm going to send you money, and I just need you to give me your online banking information, so that way I can get it to you.

All these things are ways to make the victim give out their information or send the, scam the money.

So that way they get it and run.

The worst part about this type of scam, in particular, the victims are the most likely to not believe it's a scam, even after they have been confronted with the information showing that it is that they have.

It could be out thousands of dollars of money, and they are still believing that this person is going to come and sweep them off their feet is one of the hardest ones to convince people that it is a scam going on, because they believe so much that it's not going to be, and it's going to be greener on the other side.

So the second form of scams I want to talk about is Scammers are calling posing as your financial institutions using either AI, which is artificial intelligence, or spoofing their phone number to target you.

They are phishing for information, which is where they try to get that information to use to commit this, scam, to get access to your accounts, to move all your money as fast as they can.

They will send a text message or phone call saying this is will from your financial institution.

There's been fraud on your card.

In order to prevent it, we need to lock down your account.

To lock down your account, you'll need to either give us your account information so we can go in and lock it down, or change your online banking password.

To what?

To whatever we will provide and that will freeze your account.

Once that is done.

What really happens is the scammers now have access to your account and they will either set up car transactions or transfers from the account outside of the account, so that way they can move the money as fast as they can.

In particular, this is really hard for financial institutions because your online banking information is something that only the members should have.

So when we start looking into it, it looks like the member is committing most of this fraud when it's not them.

the third type of fraud that I would like to discuss is one with where you are being told to withdraw funds from your account and put it into a Bitcoin ATM.

Bitcoin is a form of cryptocurrency.

It's on the rise.

It's a form of, marketing like stock market.

A lot more deregulated fraudsters are calling and telling people that their money is not secure in their accounts anymore.

This could be the fraudster posing as someone from law enforcement saying they are investigating an, specific teller or a specific bank branch for some type of illicit activity in order to help the law enforcement catch this person, we need you to go and withdraw funds from your bank account, and then we want you to put them into a Bitcoin machine because it will be more secure there.

What's really happening is once you withdraw those funds and you put it into this Bitcoin ATM, this scammers will have access to the wallet because they'll ask you to put it to a specific Bitcoin wallet, which is like a bank account number.

And once the money's in there, they'll move it from that wallet to another wallet, so on and so forth to until they have the physical cash, the fourth fraud that we want to talk about is what we have termed the grandparent scam.

This is where a elderly person will receive a message from someone posing as a family member, normally a grandkid, saying they are in trouble, either in the hospital or they're being arrested and they need bail money.

This one in particular is getting, scarier as time goes on.

As with artificial intelligence, AI scammers are able to replicate people's voices and they are making people call their grandparents.

And it sounds like it's the brain on the call.

So when this happens, you got to make sure you're speaking to the actual individual, sometimes asking them a trick question of like, what?

Who is it?

Is it Jamie or Jill, or what kind of nickname do they have?

Asking you a trick question to find out more generally, the correct person.

But even if you do find out, you know, they're telling you to say, please don't tell Mom and Dad.

I would still reach out and find out if it is actually their grandkid.

Like, for example, I'm in the hospital, I was beat up.

I need someone to pay for my medical bills.

I don't want my mom and dad to know, can you help me?

You should still reach out and talk to their parents and find out.

Hey, is William in the hospital right now?

Do you know where William's at?

Because a lot of times, once you find out that they're not actually in trouble, then you'll know it was a scam.

So the last type of fraud, the fifth one we want to talk about is gift card scams.

what the fraudsters are trying to get you to do is go and buy gift cards.

If someone tells you that they need you to buy a gift card from a merchant of any kind, normally in $500 increments, that is most likely a fraud scam.

What they're trying to get you to do is buy that gift card, and then you provide them the information on the back of it.

Once you do that, the money is gone.

That is like giving someone access to your debit or credit card and giving them your full account card number and your Pin number.

Now, when these scams happen, it could be anything from a secret shopper scam where you're being asked to go buy this product at a store from the supposed store.

So that way they can see how their employees do or or it could be someone posing as law enforcement saying there's a warrant out for your arrest and they need you to pay the warrant with gift cards.

At the end of the day, the common thing for all this is they want you to buy a gift cards.

Once you purchase it, that gift card was bought by you and you got it.

If you give out that information, there's no way to recover it.

take.

So we just talked about five common scams that we see daily.

There are a lot more that happen all the time.

Some common steps to take to prevent you from being targeted, or for that you from falling for one of these is the first thing.

Remain calm.

Scammers want to make sure that you are not thinking clearly.

They're going to try to pressure you and force you to be acting rapidly to what they're saying.

Stay calm.

Think it through.

That way you can kind of catch whether or not they're trying to trick you.

The other thing that they need to do is make sure you're not doing something you would not really not do.

If scammers are asking you to lie to people that you normally don't lie to, to try to catch them, that's someone trying to trick you into doing something and not following your gut.

Prime example also is to verify everything that happens.

If you receive a message from your financial institution and you think something's going on, don't just reply to that message.

Call your financial institution directly so that way you can find out if it's them reaching out to you, and if it's actually fraud, or if it's just a scam or trying to trick you out of your money.

If you have a situation like with the grandparent scam where someone is posing as someone in your family, make sure you verify with someone else in the family if it's actually happening.

Make sure to reach out and check all sources before reacting to what is being approached to you.

If something does happen, you can always report it to your local law enforcement, so that way they can investigate the situation.

And if your credit at any point do you think it's compromised, make sure you reach out to the credit bureaus to put either fraud alert or credit freeze on your credit to prevent scammers from taking our identity.

final things I want to impart, make sure everyone is aware of as a financial institution, they will never ask you for your Your online banking, information.

your social security number, card number or your Pin.

If any of this ever happens, make sure you stop the conversation and reach out to the correct individuals.

Your correct financial institution.

with the increase of fraud we are seeing happen each year and it's going to keep climbing up, just remember, if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

And make sure you trust your gut when it comes to dealing with situations.