Agencies talk scams at Scam Jam

 

 “A number of buildings all across India

are the headquarters of 

almost every scam.”

                  

                    - Jay Flemma 

                       Idaho Legal Aid

The scams:

 Tom pointed to calls, texts and emails from senders posing as someone from Amazon, FedEx, USPS and others, notifying the receiver that their package can’t be delivered due to a problem with the address.

 “I just got one this morning,” he said. “The message said, ‘Your USPS package has arrived at the warehouse and cannot be delivered due to incomplete address information. Please confirm your address in the link within 12 hours’ and ‘The U.S. Postal team wishes you a wonderful day.’

 “Scammers like to pressure you into thinking something is urgent, so you don’t have time to talk to family and friends you trust. Generally, if you call, they aren’t going to let you off the phone and will make it seem like you have to make a decision now.”

 He openly conceded that federal agencies never move fast, an indication that something isn’t right.

 “If we try to do something in 12 hours … well, that’s not going to happen,” he said, drawing chuckles from the crowd. “The postal service or social security, you can’t get anybody on the line, so that should be a sign that this is not legitimate.”

 Marcel Carvella, representing the USPS, said that specific words can be an immediate giveaway.

 “I’ve worked for the postal service since 2003; the post office isn’t going to use the term ‘warehouse,’” he said. “If you are signing up for alerts for packages, you need to go on USPS.com and enter your phone number or your email address and that’s how you get information about your mail. You won’t get unsolicited alerts.”

 Idaho Legal Aid deputy director Sunshine Ayers said there are even scammers posing as Legal Aid representatives who aim to charge their victims fees.

 “We will never, ever charge you for services,” she said, in part.

 Celia Kinney, from the Idaho Department of Finance, talked about phony collection bills and that people can contact the agency to prove whether a questionable bill is legitimate.

 The Idaho Better Business Bureau’s Heide Payne spoke about Facebook Marketplace scams that involve responses to “for sale” ad posts. She said it’s a scam if the response reads, “I want to go ahead and buy this from you,” and they want to arrange for you to meet with a third party and also pay in advance using a gift card.

 “I actually started clicking on their profile and when you look, it may have one or two pictures or fake posts,” she said. “That’s easy to tell because you know this is something they just created to be able to scam you out of money.”

 Brandi Waselewski is a program specialist for the Idaho Commission on Aging. 

 She works with a program called the Senior Medicare Patrol Program, which partners with the six Area Agencies on Aging across Idaho to do outreach and education with Medicare beneficiaries. 

 “It’s important not to share your Medicare ID with anybody,” she said, adding that people routinely receive calls asking for their Medicare ID numbers and that the information is used to make fake claims, order medical equipment and devices, genetic testing kits, diabetic supplies and more.

 This type of scam costs Medicare an estimated $60 billion a year, according to AARP.

 Where do the scams come from and who do they target?

 Idaho Legal Aid attorney Jay Flemma said that the bulk of the scams originate out of India.

 “This is the Godrej Genesis Building in a rather seedy part of the world known as Sector 5 West Bengal, Calcutta, India. And this building, and a number of buildings all across India, are the headquarters of almost every scam that is being generated,” he said holding up a picture of a modern, white six-story building. “Some of them are coming out of Jamaica, some of them are coming out of Nigeria, some are coming out of various Russian break-away republics; but India is ground zero.”

 He added, “The scams have gotten far and far more sophisticated. They used to start out with broken English and misspellings and ridiculous [statements]. They are using AI; they are generating fake voices that sound like someone you might know. It has become far more complicated and tougher to catch.”

 Tom, with the FTC, said the scams target all age groups.

 Flemma said, however, that last year, senior citizens in the U.S. lost $3.7 billion, up from about $2 billion in 2021.

 “95 percent of the victims are 65 years and older,” he noted. “In fact, when they leave you a number and you call them back, it’ll say, ‘If you are over 65, press 1,’ and if you don’t press 1, then it just hangs up on you. They are looking for people that are elderly; they are looking for people that are lonely; they are looking for people that have the onset of some sort of cognitive [degeneration] and they are looking to trick you.”

 The solution

 Unfortunately, the solution is not as robust as the list of scams. The answer to curtailing their success lies with education and vigilance on the part of consumers. 

 If you think you have been scammed, representatives at the Weiser Scam Jam agreed that although inconvenient, freezing what accounts you can is the first step in scam recovery followed by contacting the agencies listed above.

 Last May, the BBB launched a new program called the Scam Survivor Tool Kit to assist those who have been scammed. Visit BBB.org and click the BBB Scam tracker button under the menu bar to get more information.