Terri Ramsey Beavers If you’re anything like me, during the height of the pandemic when there was little else to do, I did a lot of research on different topics. One topic that kept standing out was all of the pre and post-pandemic scams. If you’d like to learn more about ways to avoid these scams, keep reading.
1. Catfish romance scams
One of the most heartbreaking scams that are robbing people of their life savings and has even made some homeless is the Nigerian catfish romance scam. It usually starts on social media or dating sites. They have established Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites along with dating profiles with someone else’s photo and information. They spark up an online romance and before long, vulnerable men and women can be convinced to send the scammers money. It’s usually the same thing, they’ve gone over to claim wills and money and are out of cash, and these victims who believe they’ll soon have millions of dollars, send them money because they trust that they’ll get it back. Of course, they never do and eventually, most of them find out they’ve been the victim of a catfish love scam. Even when family members and friends try to warn them that it’s a fraud, most of these individuals believe they are in love with someone who does not exist and it never ends well. Always, always, always, facetime with whomever you meet online and never send money to a stranger. If you talk to them on the phone or by message, and they claim to be from California but you can tell English is not their first language, that should be the first sign that something is up. A lot of the below tragedies in the following video could have been avoided if the victims had used a little more common sense.
Good ole Dr. Phil has interviewed some of the people involved in this love scam and the money they lost is staggering. These are smart and beautiful individuals who just wanted to find love but what they found was an empty bank account.
NOTE: Catfish scams go on every day and with every culture. A catfish scam is someone pretending to be someone they’re not.
2. IRS scam
Some of the most incredulous IRS scams are called the India IRS scams. Honestly, they’re almost unbelievable. Not so much unbelievable that anyone could rob people of their money, it’s more unrealistic that anyone would think the IRS, Social Security, or any other organization, would call them demanding iTunes, Target, Walmart, etc… gift cards. The elderly are more prone to falling victim to this scam than are younger individuals. There are now many YouTube and organization scam busters that are fighting back against these scammers.
What generally happens is the individual gets a message or a call that they owe the IRS (or other organization) money and they’re able to convince the individuals that if they don’t send gift cards to them, they’ll be arrested within hours. They send the victims out to buy gift cards and because there have been so many instances of these scams, most places will not allow anyone to purchase over a certain amount when it comes to gift cards. If they do a lot of places try to inform the individual about the GC scams.
There are other scams as well such as the kind in the below video. These scammers get access to your computer by informing you that you overpaid for this, that, or the other and they need to transfer money directly into your account. Of course, they don’t, it’s a little complex how they move your own money around, and there are different types and ways they do this, but to break it down, by making it look like they’ve overpaid, they then ask for the money back. The money they didn’t overpay at all.
While a lot of the scam buster videos are hilarious when they turn the cards, the scam is not. These people scam the elderly out of millions of dollars. Check out the above link to see how many hundreds of millions of dollars a group of scammers received from the elderly before they were arrested.
This guy is a hoot. He has the ability to sound like your grandma and he has a little too much fun with the scammers.
3. Insurance Fraud
This scam is one of the ones that scare me the most. While I believe I’d never fall victim to other scams by using common sense, this one can happen to anyone that drives. One way to avoid this is to have a car dashboard camera recorder installed and turned on anytime you drive.
There are different ways people perform insurance scams. There’s the brake check scam and then there are pedestrians who actually throw themselves at vehicles to make it look like they were hit. Again, car cameras are your friend.
The cost of insurance fraud totals more than 4 billion dollars a year.
The below failed insurance fraud fails made my day.
This post is meant to be informative, not to incite hate or racism. I have friends from every walk of life and hate and racism do not have a place in my life nor on my website. Please respect one another.
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