National Fraud Awareness Week: Shutdown Scams and Holiday Hoaxes

Every day, people get texts that make their heart race. “You have an unpaid toll balance. Please pay to avoid penalties or further action.” “Driver Chat: A message from the driver delivering your Amazon packages. Click here to reply.” “Hello, this is TikTok Recruitment Center. We are now hiring 3,000 TikTok backup talents.” These messages may seem very different but they have one thing in common: they’re fake. The language is designed to get people to click on links that often steal information or money. Internet scams are nothing new but while the government was shutdown, they increased by at least ten percent, according to Nomorobo, a fraud prevention service. He spoke with Radio Catskill in anticipation of National Fraud Awareness Week, which runs from November 16-22 this year.

Matt Mizenko, a General Manager at Nomorobo, says his company was anticipating conmen taking advantage of the shutdown. He told WJFF, “We saw, generally speaking, an increase in just overall call volume of about 80%. The number of calls within that increase that we’ve had to block depends on the region, but it’s been anywhere from 50% to up to 150% of normal.” Mizenko says people were particularly vulnerable due to uncertainty about food stamps, immigration status, and healthcare premiums. “Because no one in the government is answering phones, it’s very easy for a scammer to call and say they are from the IRS, Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration, and there’s no way for the person that’s being victimized to call and verify whether that’s true or not, because those agencies just simply aren’t there.”

Artificial intelligence is also making it easier than ever to contact people en masse. Algorithms can identify people in financial trouble, collect contact information for them, and even write the messages. Mizenko referenced the unpaid toll text quoted above and explained, “ That’s why it propagated so quickly, because it’s basically no effort to spin those things up and you get a lot of money. If you can get 10 people to pay a $500 fine, you’ve now made $5,000.”

Now that the shutdown has ended, Mizenko anticipates scams shifting back to ones that are usually prominent this time of year. Right now, that means taking advantage of open enrollment season for healthcare. Then, he predicts, “after the first of the year, we’ll see the IRS scams pop up and then in the middle will be the package scams because people are worried about if they’re going to get their packages for their holiday gifts.”

As the technology gets more sophisticated and situations like a shutdown leave people particularly vulnerable, it’s easier than ever to fall prey to a scam. “ One of the most important takeaways that we got from (our) research survey was that anybody can be a victim and you should certainly not victim blame… scamming cuts across every demographic.”

Photo Credit: Annie Bennett