Floridaers beware: The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is collecting data on so-called tech-enabled impostors, which suggests a wave of high-profile victims in Florida .
IC3’s Elderly Fraud Report ranks Florida second nationally for tech impersonation scams with 9,645 individuals age 60 and older falling victim to the scam.
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According to the FBI, criminals can act as security representatives, customers, or tech support offering bogus issues like compromised email or bank accounts, viruses on computers, and so on. calculate or renew the software license.
The contacts will come from an unsolicited phone call, search engine advertisement, a pop-up message or a lock screen device.
In the last case, the victim’s device shows a frozen locked screen with a phone number that leads you to a bogus tech support company.
According to Ron Long, Director of Wells Fargo Seniors Customer Service, the ultimate game is always about making money.
“Telephone and internet are (a) the least means of getting them to bait,” says Long.
In one recent case, a Wells Fargo customer lost $20,000 of his own money after technology-fixing impostors transferred money from his savings into his checking account.
Long told News 6 that it was banking of the hand.
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“What they do is take your own money from your savings account, transfer $20,000 to your checking account, and then say, ‘Oh, that $20,000 is ours,’” Long said.
In this case, the victim believed that the impostors would lose their jobs because they were only refunded $200 to him after the security service was cancelled.
The $20,000 “mistake” was convincing enough for the victim to tell the bank that he needed to transfer money to a family member.
“One of the things that prevents a lot of this fraud is better communication with both your family and your financial institution,” says Long.
Individuals who believe they may be the victim of an online scam, regardless of the amount, should file a complaint with IC3 at www.ic3.gov. The more often frauds and scams are reported, the better equipped law enforcement can be to deal with the problems.
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