Thought of the week: Why is it so hard to get accurate information about Covid19? At the FTC the philosophy is that given good information people overall make good decisions. They will do OK.
Coronavirus
- Rhode Island: Criminal charges against two that fraudulently applied for $500,000 small business loan
- Arizona: 900 of bottles of totally diluted bleach seized, along with fake virus test kits
- Virus making it harder for scammers to get their money mules to go out and do tasks for them
- Canada has taken down over 1500 virus scam websites
- Canadian PPE suppliers being targeted with orders impersonating other companies; ship equipment to London, where it is forwarded to Nigeria
- Brooklyn: Man arrested for stealing stimulus checks from mail boxes
- Counterfeit PPE coming out of China and Taiwan
- Chicago college student ripped off hundreds by selling toilet paper he never delivered; used ads on Facebook
- Online mask order said it was from the US, but really shipped from China; how scammers manipulate postal tracking numbers
- Ad monitoring group tells FTC that Herbalife is making virus claims
- Postal Inspectors set up web site for virus scams
- Fake Pizza hut websites being set up to steal credit card info
Virus shutdown fuels pet scams (My BBB study on pet scams here)
- Pet scams up 42% during shut down warns National Consumers League
- Petscams.com also reports a big jump in this fraud
- So does Buzzfeed
- Big spike in pet scams in the UK
Tip of the week: Online shopping, counterfeits and fraud. With so many stores closed people are increasingly shopping online for common goods. But a large part of those are actually counterfeit. In fact, over half the goods sold on Amazon are by “third party sellers” that ship directly to victims and not from Amazon; usually from China. Huge numbers of complaints to the FTC and BBB are from people who shopped online, paid with a credit card, and never received anything at all. So make sure goods you receive are authentic, and call your credit card company and dispute the charge if they are counterfeit or never arrive. And see my BBB study on counterfeit goods fraud
Prediction: Bankruptcy! We are almost certainly coming up on a flood of individuals and businesses that can’t pay rent, mortgages, credit card bills, etc. So expect a large wave of people in financial distress. And the scammers will be out there to take advantage. Watch for scam debt collectors, mortgage, student loan and credit card debt and other financial relief frauds.
BBB studies: They can all be found here. There are links below to several topic areas, and there are also studies on puppy fraud, tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, and rental fraud
