Category: Fraud and Crackdowns

Scammers posing as FEMA inspectors are targeting disaster survivors at the start of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, showing up at damaged homes, calling, and texting with offers of grants or inspections that come with a price tag. Real FEMA inspectors carry government-issued photo identification, and the agency never charges fees for disaster assistance, never…

A retired schoolteacher in the Midwest was days from cashing out her 401(k) when her phone rang earlier this year. On the other end was an FBI agent with unwelcome news: the cryptocurrency trading platform she had been funding for months, the one showing steady double-digit returns and staffed by attentive customer-service reps, did not…

It started, as it almost always does, with a text from a stranger. A wrong number. A friendly correction. Then a conversation that stretched from small talk into something that felt like genuine connection. Weeks later, the stranger mentioned a cryptocurrency trading app that had been quietly making them rich. They offered to walk their…

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 201,000 complaints from Americans aged 60 and older in 2025, and the financial damage those complaints describe is difficult to absorb: $7.7 billion lost to internet crime, a 59% increase over the prior year, according to the bureau’s annual report released earlier this year. Investment fraud…

Your phone rings. The caller ID says Apple. A recorded voice warns that suspicious activity has been detected on your account and asks you to press 1 to speak with a support advisor. A live person picks up, sounds professional, and tells you the only way to protect your funds is to transfer them to…

Somewhere between the cap-and-gown photos and the open-house planning, millions of Americans will receive digital party invitations this month. The Federal Trade Commission wants you to know that some of those invitations are traps. In a consumer alert published in May 2026, the FTC warned that scammers are sending fraudulent messages designed to look like…

Every January, criminals race to file fraudulent tax returns before real taxpayers do. Their weapon is stolen personal data, often purchased in bulk from dark-web marketplaces that sell Social Security numbers alongside names, dates of birth, and W-2 details. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has documented billions of dollars in fraudulent refunds flowing…

In a scenario consistent with cases documented in FBI and FinCEN advisories, a controller at a midsize real-estate firm wired $430,000 on a Friday afternoon to close on a commercial property. The wire instructions had arrived by email from what appeared to be the title company’s address. By the following Monday morning, the controller realized…

The text arrives mid-morning, from a number you don’t recognize: “Hi, are you interested in a remote position? $300/day, flexible hours.” If you’ve been job hunting for a while, your thumb hovers over the reply button. Don’t tap it. In the first half of 2024, Americans reported losing more than $220 million to job scams,…

Sportsman’s Warehouse customers who swiped a credit or debit card at the outdoor retailer in 2024 may have had their payment data stolen, and a settlement tied to the breach could put up to $107 in their hands. The catch: the filing deadline is June 19, and many eligible shoppers still have no idea they…