Scammers pretending to work for the Federal Trade Commission are nothing new, but perhaps they’ve never been so successful.
So far in 2024, fake FTC agents have stolen about $7,000 per scam, a sharp increase from the $3,000 figure the agency reported in 2019.
“The FTC will never tell consumers to move their money to ‘protect’ it. The FTC will never send consumers to a Bitcoin ATM, tell them to go buy gold bars, or ask them to withdraw cash and bring it to someone in person,” the agency said in a warning notice Tuesday.
The agency did not specify a number for 2024, but said it has received “many complaints” from concerned citizens who say they have been asked to move, transfer or transfer funds by a person claiming to be part of the FTC. In 2022, the FTC received 197,573 reports of scammers pretending to be government agents, and last year that number rose to 228,282.
Scams, in general, remain a growing problem. The Consumer Sentinel Network, a secure database maintained by the FTC, reported last year that fraud losses reached $10 billion, an all-time high and a 14% increase from 2022.
“Digital tools are making it easier than ever to target hard-working Americans, and we see the effects in the data we release today,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said last month about of the problem. latest fraud data.
In addition to never asking for money, no one at the FTC will threaten arrest or deportation over the phone or through a messaging app. The agency also highlighted current guidelines created to spot potential scammers, including some who have begun impersonating Amazon employees.
“Talk to someone you trust”
Last month, a story from the financial advice columnist for Cutting, Charlotte Cowles, went viral after describing in the piece how she fell for a scam that checked all those boxes. In her first-person column, she recounted how she ended up putting $50,000 in a shoebox and handing it to a stranger.
The elaborate ruse Cowles described began with someone calling her posing as an Amazon representative and asking about some suspicious purchases. After convincing Cowles that her identity had been stolen, the fake Amazon representative connected her to someone else who identified himself as an FTC investigator. This led to Cowles speaking to a fake CIA agent who ordered her to put the money in a box and hand it to an “undercover agent” who pulled up in an SUV.
“When I told friends what had happened,” Cowles wrote, “everyone seemed to have a horror story. A friend’s father, a criminal defense lawyer, had been scammed out of $1.2 million. Another person I know, a real estate developer, was tricked into transferring $450,000 to someone posing as one of his contractors. Someone else knew a Wall Street executive who had been tricked into draining his 401(k) by a guy he met in a bar.
FTC data shows that about one in five people lost money to a scam in 2023. A 2019 report from the Consumer Sentinel Network found that people in their 20s and 30s were most likely to fall for scams, but that those over 40 tended to have greater losses.
“Fraud affects every generation,” the FTC wrote. “If someone has contacted you asking for money or your personal information, stop. Talk to someone you trust. And check the request.