Fraud & Scams
Financial fraud, phishing, identity theft, scam alerts, data breaches, and how to protect yourself and your accounts.
Latest in Fraud & Scams
Thieves are “washing” checks stolen from mailboxes, so pay bills online or at the counter
A stolen check rarely stays the amount it was written for. Mail thieves lift envelopes from home mailboxes and the blue collection boxes on the...
A flat $80 with no proof is on the table for people caught in the Lucent Health data breach
About 37,000 people notified in the Lucent Health Solutions data breach can now claim a flat $80 with no documentation required, part of a $1.95...
A \”brushing\” scam sends an unordered package to use your stolen personal data
An unordered package arriving on a doorstep can look like a harmless mistake or an unexpected gift, but investigators treat it as a warning light....
Banks may refuse to refund a Zelle payment you were tricked into sending yourself
A payment sent through Zelle can be nearly impossible to claw back, and federal rules draw a sharp line that surprises many people who assume...
An ex-Fidelity broker got six and a half years for draining $2 million from a 75-year-old over 600 transfers
A former Fidelity Investments broker was sentenced on August 20 to six years and eight months in federal prison for siphoning more than $2 million...
Medicare’s fall enrollment opens the door to scam calls, and seniors reported over $100 million in losses last year
Medicare’s Open Enrollment runs from October 15 to December 7, and every year that six-week window brings a surge of calls, texts and emails from...
Anyone caught in the Doxim data breach has until October 13 to file for up to $100
People whose personal information was exposed in the 2023 Doxim data breach have a limited window to claim money, and the clock runs out on...
Watch for IRS impersonators: the real agency mails first and never demands instant payment
IRS impersonation remains one of the most common ways scammers separate older Americans from their money, and the defense rests on a single fact: the...
A Georgia man was convicted of laundering nearly $3 million drained from elderly victims’ retirement savings
A federal jury in Georgia has convicted a Douglasville man of laundering more than $2.7 million stolen from victims of romance and online scams, money...
A free credit freeze blocks scammers from opening new accounts in your name
A credit freeze is one of the few fraud defenses that is both free and close to airtight, and federal regulators single it out as...
Debit-card fraud can empty your account, while a credit card caps your loss at $50
Two plastic cards can sit in the same wallet and carry wildly different protection when they fall into the wrong hands. Federal law caps a...
Banks must refund unauthorized electronic charges you report within 60 days of the statement
A stranger who drains a checking account through a debit card or an unauthorized transfer is not necessarily a loss the account holder has to...
Verify-first calls to a known number stop most grandparent and impostor scams
The most effective defense against a grandparent scam or an impostor call is also the cheapest: hang up and call back on a number already...
A Dominican call-center operator was extradited over an elder-fraud scheme that drained more than $5 million from 400 victims
An elder-fraud case that reached across an international border has landed a Dominican call-center operator in a U.S. courtroom, extradited to face charges tied to...
True World Holdings data-breach victims can claim a no-proof $50 before September 8
People whose personal data was caught up in the True World Holdings breach can claim a flat $50 with no documentation, and the window to...
Lands’ End data-breach victims can take a no-proof $60, or up to $5,000 documented, before October 22
People whose personal information was exposed in the Lands’ End data breach can now choose between a quick $60 cash payment that requires no documentation...
The FTC shut down a credit-repair network that took about $200 million and filed fake identity-theft reports in customers’ names
Federal regulators have moved to shut down a sprawling credit-repair operation that, they say, collected about $200 million from customers while quietly doing something that...
A Missouri woman was convicted of taking $66,000 of her mother’s Social Security while her mother lived overseas with dementia
A federal jury in Missouri has convicted a 50-year-old woman of stealing roughly $66,000 that belonged to her own mother, money drawn from the mother’s...
Port-out scammers steal your phone number to intercept the codes guarding your bank
A bank account can be drained without a password ever being guessed, because the weakest link is often a phone number rather than a login....
Bank of America customers hit by the MOVEit data breach can claim up to $100 before October 8
Roughly 200,000 Bank of America customers whose personal information was exposed in the 2023 MOVEit hack now have a way to collect a flat cash...