Shoppers buying Amazon Prime Day deals this week have been urged to stay vigilant as scammers take advantage of the annual sale.
06.07.2023 - 23:25 / thegavoice.com
She was embarrassed to tell me, and once she did, I understood why. My friend of 20 years, a smart woman who has worked with technology for most of her career, got scammed out of $500.
My friend is now in her 70s and received a professional-looking email from a popular computer security company that told her she owed nearly $1,000 on her account. An older person on a fixed income, her initial reaction was panic and a desperate need to remain in good standing with her credit. In a knee-jerk response, she clicked on the link in the email, which directed her to connect with someone who could help her pay off this balance. Instead of a credit card, the representative instructed her to go to a local drug store and use gift cards to pay off her debt. When she attempted to buy these gift cards, her bank stepped in and stopped the process. Unfortunately for her, the bank didn’t step in until $500 had already been spent.
Common sense would sniff such a scam out right away. Why not simply log in to your account and see what you actually owe or wait for a charge to appear and dispute it with your bank? And once you have to physically go to a store to initiate an alternative transaction, how could you not question if it’s legitimate? Fear is common sense’s mortal enemy and a primary driver when it comes to money. She may have briefly questioned what she was doing, but the fear of owing that much money took over and led her to make a terrible decision.
She’s not alone. The Federal Trade Commission reports consumers of all ages reported losing nearly $8.8 billion to scams just last year. When it specifically comes to tech scams, AARP reports this category is the most often reported against people 60 and older, resulting in $588
Shoppers buying Amazon Prime Day deals this week have been urged to stay vigilant as scammers take advantage of the annual sale.
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about a woman who was able to convince her friends and family that she had cancer for nearly a decade — convincing them to give her more than $100,000 for “treatment” in the process— has captivated listeners.Amanda Riley, a former teacher and principal from Northern California, was last May to five years in federal prison for wire fraud in the scheme, which she pled guilty to in October 2021. From 2012 to 2019, Riley had told friends, family, and internet strangers, via social media and a blog, that she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the US Attorney’s office said, adding she “used her presence on these sites to ‘document’ her nonexistent medical condition, and to aggressively solicit donations, supposedly to cover her medical expenses.”In order to keep up her scheme, Riley shaved her head, falsified medical records, and even sued a local journalist, Nancy Muscatello, who had grown suspicious of her and began to dig into Riley and her blog.
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