Don’t Have a Fraudulent Valentine’s Day
Romance is in the air, but so is fraud.
I hate it when scammers take advantage of you on holidays. In fact, I don’t much like being the person responsible for telling you that fraud goes way up during holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day. But it’s my job, and it’s important to me, and you have nothing to worry about if you are using common sense. In case your common sense is lacking due to all of the chocolate, here are some thoughts on Valentines Scams.
In happy and/or busy moments, people tend to let their guard down. Consumers are happier, more trusting, generous and hopeful around Valentine’s Day. This is a good thing. We want people to be happy, in love and celebrating each other.
I just don’t want you to be so distracted that it gives an identity thief an opening to take advantage of you. Around this time there is a rise of online scams, especially where thieves send out malicious links that direct you to a site where you are tricked into giving personal information.
Identity Theft Scam Stole Millions – Pennies at a Time
The FTC just busted a long-running internet scam where offshore thieves set up virtual companies and stole millions of dollars from US consumers one small charge at a time.
“It was a very patient scam,” said Steve Wernikoff, a staff attorney with the FTC who is prosecuting the case. According to him, the scammers found loopholes in the credit card processing system that allowed them to set up fake U.S. companies that then ran more than a million phony credit card transactions through legitimate credit card processing companies.
The fraudsters were able to fly under the radar for so long because they only charged consumers between $ .25 and $9 and set up over 100 fake companies to pull off these transactions. In this specific case they charged over 1.35 million credit cards a total of $9.5 million dollars – those nickles and dimes really add up! Shockingly, 94% of these charges went undetected by the credit card holder because they didn’t notice an unusual charge on their credit card statements and fraud detection agencies rarely detect anything under $10.
With more and more credit cards being accepted for smaller purchases (e.g., soda machines and parking meters) thieves have taken this opportunity to cash in on the frequency of these charges. While 6% of the charges were detected and reported, the huge number that didn’t even realize they had an unauthorized charge shows how lax we are about checking our statements. Here are some simple steps you can take to catch fraud early:
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