Fraud & Scams
Financial fraud, phishing, identity theft, scam alerts, data breaches, and how to protect yourself and your accounts.
Latest in Fraud & Scams
A payment processor is banned for life and will pay $12 million after handling money for shell merchants
The Federal Trade Commission filed a proposed order on September 8, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan that would...
Medicare cut off 11 equipment suppliers over $3.4 billion in suspect billing, including claims filed after patients died
A New Jersey durable medical equipment company billed a Medicare Advantage plan 38 separate times for a beneficiary who was already dead, listing dates of...
Regulators charged 38 firms with faking U.S. investment-adviser registrations to look legitimate to savers
Thirty-eight firms told the Securities and Exchange Commission they were legitimate, U.S.-registered investment advisers serving American savers, and on August 27 the agency filed civil...
Comcast stops taking claims on its $117.5 million data breach settlement September 14
A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted final approval to a $117.5 million settlement over Comcast’s October 2023 data breach on August...
Report a fraudulent charge within 60 days to cap what you owe
Federal law caps how much a bank customer can be forced to pay for a fraudulent charge, but the size of that cap depends entirely...
Regulators charged 38 operations that posed as registered U.S. investment advisers to reel in small investors
Federal regulators charged 38 entities that spent the past two years filing paperwork designed to look like a real investment advisory business, a scheme the...
Regulators charged a California fund chief with an $80 million Ponzi that pulled in nearly 190 investors, many retired
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the former chief executive of a Novato, California, real estate lending firm with running an offering fraud that...
Federal regulators now say a bank may warn a customer when a frozen account is tied to fraud
Five federal banking regulators said this week that a bank or credit union has always been free to tell a customer that a frozen account,...
Scammers now use AI voice clones to fake a grandchild’s emergency call and demand cash
A caller claiming to be a panicked grandchild no longer needs to sound convincing on the fly — artificial intelligence can now generate that voice...
Callers posing as U.S. Marshals are pushing seniors to hand their savings to gold-bar couriers
A caller in Honolulu told an elderly widow this summer that he was a deputy U.S. Marshal, that her Social Security number had been linked...
Fake toll-payment texts are now the fastest-growing government-imposter scam
Fake text messages demanding instant payment for an unpaid highway toll have become the fastest-growing form of government-imposter fraud, and the growth now shows up...
A financial adviser who pushed 2,000 clients to raid retirement accounts drew the maximum 20 years for a $380 million Ponzi scheme
A federal judge in Atlanta sentenced Todd Burkhalter, founder of the Georgia financial advisory firm Drive Planning LLC, to the statutory maximum of 20 years...
Locking your Social Security number online blocks new-account identity theft
A thief with a Social Security number and little else can open a credit card, take out a loan, or file a false tax return...
Romance and crypto “pig-butchering” scams are the fastest-growing way thieves drain retirement savings
A stranger’s message lands out of nowhere — a wrong-number text, a dating-app match, a new follower with a friendly comment — and months later,...
Elder-fraud losses hit roughly $7.75 billion last year, a 59% jump
Older Americans reported losing roughly $7.75 billion to fraud last year, a 59% jump over the prior year, according to the FBI’s own tally of...
A Doxim data-breach settlement pays credit-union members up to $5,000, or $100 with no proof, by October 13
A $5.5 million settlement is now open to people notified that their personal information was exposed in a December 2023 data breach at Doxim, Inc.,...
Federal agents caught the accused ringleader of a $250 million gold-and-cash scam that drained older Americans as he tried to flee through JFK airport
A criminal network accused of stripping more than $250 million from older Americans lost its accused top money-mover this week. Authorities caught the man investigators...
A verbal password on a bank account blocks a caller who spoofs the bank
A phone rings with the bank’s own customer-service number on the display, and the caller already knows the account holder’s name and the last four...
Fake security-alert scams are draining older Americans’ life savings, with reports of $100,000-plus losses up nearly sevenfold since 2020
Reports of business and government impersonation scams costing older Americans more than $100,000 apiece climbed nearly sevenfold between 2020 and 2024, according to a federal...
State officials are warning that “tariff rebate” texts promising a $2,000 check are a scam, because no such payment has been approved
State officials in Idaho are warning residents that text messages promising a $2,000 “tariff rebate” check are fraudulent, timed to exploit real political chatter about...