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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Careful when booking that vaccine appointment or COVID test. Take a second if you're offered a too-good-to-be-true insurance policy or internet package, scammers are taking advantage of people's increased online presence and eagerness to get back into the world. Has anyone offered you a fake vaccine passport?

In this segment, we'll invite your pandemic scam story so other listeners can be armed against them, and we'll get advice from an official from the Federal Trade Commission. During the height of the pandemic, scammers tapped into COVID fears by offering fake tests, fake insurance policies, and fake contact tracing.

Now with increased vaccine access with plenty of vaccine misinformation, they're trying to use the vaccine as a tool to swindle people out of their money and personal information more and more. One line of defense is the Federal Trade Commission. They collect data from individual consumer's reports of fraud, identity theft and other scam attempts to track trends and try to keep one step ahead of the scammers.

Joining me now is Kati Daffan, Attorney and Assistant Director in the Federal Trade Commission's division of marketing practices to tell us more about pandemic-related scams and what we can do to avoid them. Kati, thanks so much for this time. Welcome to WNYC.

Kati Daffan: Thanks for having me, Brian. I'm happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open. Have you been scammed during the pandemic? Have you seen anyone offering fake tests or promising fake vaccine access? Do you believe you're experiencing more scam activity during the pandemic? Have you seen scams related to online shopping that seem to be different than in normal times?

If you consider yourself savvy and unscalable, how do you successfully identify them? Give us a call, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. Kati, how are scammers most commonly leveraging the vaccine rollout, in particular, to access our money and personal information?

Kati Daffan: With the vaccine rollout, we're seeing a couple of different things. Most commonly, scammers are telling people that they need to pay to put their name on a list to get the vaccine or pay to get early access to the vaccine in past days. We're telling people, nobody who's legitimate will call, text, or email you about the vaccine and ask for your social security number, bank account, or credit card number. Those are sure signs of a scam.

The other thing that we've seen are scammers emailing and texting about fake vaccine surveys. People should, in general, not click on links in emails or texts, but if they see something like this, they should definitely stop because that's a scam.

Brian Lehrer: Does the fact that people are being asked to bring insurance cards to vaccine appointments lead people to mistakenly believe insurance is required to get the vaccine and does that make them vulnerable to any particular scams?

Kati Daffan: You raise a great question. We do see that scammers target particular communities, including, of course, the uninsured or low-income communities generally. I think you have a very legitimate concern there.

Brian Lehrer: I see that younger people report they've been scammed more through apps and the internet, and money is more likely to be accessed through payment apps. Older people report they're getting scammed more over the phone and their money is more likely taken through their credit cards. How sophisticated are scammers now when it comes to targeting specific age groups?

Kati Daffan: We see that they're pretty sophisticated and that there's a lot of targeting that goes on. We worry a lot about that and think a lot about that, which is why I was so happy to hear you plug that people can file reports with us. We use that information every day in our targeting and law enforcement but so do many other law enforcers across the country and even globally. One of the things we can do is try to analyze the reporting data that we get to see how different groups are being affected.

Brian Lehrer: For example, I've read that people are making or selling fake vaccine passports or vaccination cards now, is that something that you're aware of or does it fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission?

Kati Daffan: Yes, we have seen reports of that and it would fall under our jurisdiction which has to do with deceptive and unfair practices, so it's a really broad swath of the economy. I know that other law enforcers are also very keyed into that particular issue you raised and so many other scams that are, unfortunately, following the headlines when it comes to the COVID pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: Is there a way that a restaurant or entertainment venue can tell a fake vaccination card or passport QR code like we have here in New York, from a real one?

Kati Daffan: Right now, there's no one code like New York has, or one way that people are proving that they're vaccinated unless it's through the official government system. That may, of course, change over time as the rollout is happening, but that's the situation we're in right now.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take phone call. I think Matt in Harlem has a story. Matt, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Matt: Hi, Brian. I got a note from the state of Pennsylvania claiming that I had filled out unemployment compensation there and collected $15,000 some more dollars last year and I did not. I've never lived or worked in Pennsylvania. Furthermore, they sent the money, supposedly, to my folk's address in Oregon, who, of course, never saw it.

I'm just waiting to get a note from IRS saying, "Hey, by the way, why didn't you pay taxes on the $15,000 you don't have?" Am I on the edge of a knife here, or should I ignore it? Of course, I called Pennsylvania said, "Hey, by the way, this was me," but they didn't answer the call. So I went on their website and said, "We got a lot of calls on this. Don't worry about it," but, God, I'm worried about it.

Brian Lehrer: Kati, do you know that one, and can you help him personally?

Kati Daffan: Yes. Unfortunately, we've seen this. It's a large-scale scam that has been happening in the midst of this pandemic. Imposters are filing claims for unemployment benefits using real names and personal information of people who have not actually filed claims. Our advice if this happens to you is to report the fraud to your employer, to your state unemployment benefits agency, and then to also visit identitytheft.gov to report the fraud to the FTC.

That site will also give you help with the next important recovery steps, like placing a fraud alert on your credit, getting free credit reports, and closing any fraudulent accounts that were opened in your name, if any. Those are our major pieces of advice. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, I hope that's helpful for your situation. Thank you for alerting other people to that particular scam. Jennifer in Naugatuck, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Hi there. How are you today?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You have a story about your parents, I see.

Jennifer: Yes. I haven't encountered any COVID-specific related scams, but my elderly parents live in the south. I get phone calls from them almost daily now about calls that they're receiving regarding their home insurance, their car insurance, their senior-related health care questions that are obviously scams. My parents have actually fallen for more than a few this year that I've had to chase and make-- It's another part-time job for me, chasing these companies to get their money back.

I've noticed that in the last year since the onset of COVID, the calls have increased dramatically for them, to the point where I almost wish that I could just take their phone away just to stop it because it's hard to stop.

Brian Lehrer: Jennifer, have you ever been able to get the money back for your parents from a scammer, and if so, how?

Jennifer: A couple of times I have. There was one that was related to someone trying to sell my parents additional health care that with enough phone calls, it took several days. They were very abusive on the phone when I tried to get the money back from them. That was their tactic. They would try to be abusive until you would just get angry and then they could hang up on you. I just literally just stayed on the phone and took the verbal abuse until they broke down and gave me the money back.

Brian Lehrer: That's amazing. Kati, I hear you reacting to Jennifer's tale of woe here regarding her parents. What can you tell her, and what can you tell everybody else about that?

Kati Daffan: Unfortunately, this is all too common as the internet and the telephone system have combined. It has become so easy and so inexpensive for scammers to make calls from all over the world. One thing that Jennifer probably knows but that everyone needs to know is that they can easily fake the caller ID that people see when they receive a call which really tricks people and they're also very savvy about using personal information and all kinds of other things to make their calls seem legitimate.

In this situation, one of the major things that we recommend is to look into call blocking. Unfortunately, once you have been victimized by a scam, your number may also be on lists that are circulated among other scammers. As Jennifer's saying the phone becomes very unreliable and can be dangerous.

Luckily, one upside is that the options for call blocking have increased in recent years. If you search on our site for how to block unwanted calls, you can see the options whether you're on a mobile phone, on a landline, or if you have voice over internet telephony in your home, you can find options for blocking calls.

Brian Lehrer: When we talk about older people, and Jennifer, thank you for that. There's one going around, I've heard, to older people, that says, "Your Social Security is about to be cut off or has been hacked," and then they try to sell you some protection or fake restoration of your benefits. Or, "Your computer has been infected with a virus, let us take control of your computer remotely to fix it for you," and then they try to charge you or they get into your passwords. I know another person who was scammed with that one. Do you want people to do anything other than ignore calls and emails like these if they can tell that it's a scam?

Kati Daffan: No. We tell people just to hang up. That's because sometimes if you press one and engage with a scammer, or try to do something like that to try to fight back, you could just end up getting your phone number on a list of working phone numbers and possibly even increasing the calls that you receive. Our advice is just hang up.

To be concrete about that, anything that's a recorded call, if you have not given your express written consent to receive calls from that particular seller, then it's an illegal call already. You know that whatever they're going to say to you is going to be a scam. We just say hang up the phone. If you have time and you're willing, report it to the FTC.

Brian Lehrer: Michael in Mendham, you're on WNYC. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Brian, thank you for taking my call. We had a very similar thing to what you just described. We got an email, a bill from supposedly the Geek Squad for some computer insurance or whatever. It was for $700 and it was on twice. Then they contacted us and they said, "We're going to give you a refund."

We didn't know what they were talking about. Somehow, they had found our last four digits of our bank account. They wanted the bank account so they could deposit the money. That's our story. We ended up changing our bank account number just to make sure, but they were very persistent about this. It sounds very much like what your guest or you just described.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you very much. When would people have to take a step of changing their bank account number or credit card number or something like that?

Kati Daffan: I do think that it's really smart to change it if you've seen any signs of unauthorized billing on your account. That's something that we advise is to check your accounts regularly. If you see something that shouldn't be there, and it's a credit card, you can dispute that and hopefully, a chargeback will be issued for you.

That's one of the reasons we recommend that people pay with credit card rather than other forms of payments. If you do see unauthorized charges there, it may mean that someone has your personal information and you should go ahead and change your account.

Brian Lehrer: Let's try one more. Mike in Howell, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. We've got about 20 seconds for you. How were you scammed or did someone try to scam you?

Mike: I'm afraid that New Jersey Unemployment haven't-- I was furloughed, haven't received any checks, and finally after my time was up, they said, "You've been locked out because we need to have you establish your identity through a third party called ID Me." They want to put cookies on the computer. They want my social security number, everything and I'm afraid of it because it seems to me unemployment already paid me last year for furloughed for a couple of months.

They have my employer, they've got my social security number, they got everything they need. "Why do I have to put everything up in the cloud through a third party?" They said, "Once they're done, they'll just shred it." I'm thinking, "Shred it?"Nothing gets shredded. It's going to be--

Brian Lehrer: Mike, let me get you an answer. It sounds like he may be complaining about something that's not a scam but that's the way the government bureaucracy works. That demands that he give up a lot of personal information. How can somebody tell whether something like that is real or a scam?

Kati Daffan: It sounds like he's very savvy because everyone should be on the lookout. Even if you think you're dealing with a government agency and probably really are here, but one thing I want to tell people is that you should always verify that you really are because we see a ton of imposter scams, where people very credibly claim with all kinds of bells and whistles that they are associated with a government agency or with law enforcement.

The only way to really check that is to not use the link or the callback number that they provided, but instead, do your own research and you have to look carefully on the internet because there can also be misleading ads there. You want to find the official site, and then find the official phone number and call and see if you're dealing with the right person.

Brian Lehrer: A good closing tip from Kati Daffan, Assistant Director of the Federal Trade Commission's division of marketing practices. Kati, thank you so much.

Kati Daffan: Thanks for having me.

 

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