Home Consumer Beware Of New “Friends” Get Rich Schemes

Beware Of New “Friends” Get Rich Schemes

https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/phones-surrounded-by-social-media-icons-concept-illustration_5453427.htm#query=online%20dating&position=1&from_view=search

Looking for friendship in the wrong places? Beware of new “friends” get rich schemes.

Online financial scams are easy to talk about but the scammers often hide them through personal contacts and promises of “friendship.”

They’ll rope you in with days of personal questions to get you emotionally involved while at the same time being evasive about themselves.

Online financial fraud is at record levels. “Friendship Scams” are among the most reported.

Faith Based Events

In most cases, you’ll never get a real telephone number and usually just a text number or repeated attempts to get you into an unmoderated and heavily encrypted chat room.

In the beginning, it will be a very friendly conversation. But after a while, it may turn to finances and hobbies…..and offers to share a common hobby together.

Once you firmly decline to “share a common interest” like “Binary Currency Exchange”, the relationship suddenly changes and promises of friendship cease. It’s like , “You’re not really serious about a relationship with me if you’re not interested in my hobbies”.

According to the FTC’s latest figures:

“In 2021, 5.7 million people filed reports and described losing more than $5.8 billion to fraud — a $2.4 billion jump in losses in one year. You can learn about the types of fraud, identity theft, and marketplace issues people reported by state, and how scammers took payment — including $750 million in cryptocurrency — in the FTC’s new Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book.

Here are some of the highlights:

More than 2.8 million people reported spotting fraud, and one in four said they also lost money. Their combined losses were over $5.8 billion. Imposter scams, when someone pretended to be a trusted person or business, led to losses of $2.3 billion.

Almost 600,000 people filed reports about credit bureaus in 2021, an increase of more than 80 percent over the previous year. This jump in reports made credit bureaus, information furnishers, and report users the #3 most-reported category of 2021, behind imposter scams (#2) and identity theft (#1).

People ages 20-29 reported losing money to fraud more often than people ages 80 and over. While younger people lost money 41 percent of the time they experienced fraud, older adults lost money only 17 percent of the time. But when older people did lose money, they lost a median amount of $1,500, or three times the median amount younger people lost.

Get rich schemes are well known. But in these days of isolation and global political upheaval and wars, it’s easy to look for “friendship” online.

It’s also becoming too easy to fall prey to their clouded offers of sharing “inside tips” and getting caught in a tangled web of financial fraud.

Here’s a recent SEC advisory and more info:

https://www.sec.gov/files/ia_binary.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_option

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-avoid-scam

Copyright 2022, Sunshine News, Llc. Duplication is encouraged with credit.

[vc_message message_box_style=”solid-icon” message_box_color=”blue”]By Al Sunshine, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Consumer Investigator, Sunshine News LLC, Mar. 9, 2022

Republished with permission[/vc_message]


Disclaimer

The information contained in South Florida Reporter is for general information purposes only.
The South Florida Reporter assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the contents of the Service.
In no event shall the South Florida Reporter be liable for any special, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages or any damages whatsoever, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tort, arising out of or in connection with the use of the Service or the contents of the Service. The Company reserves the right to make additions, deletions, or modifications to the contents of the Service at any time without prior notice.
The Company does not warrant that the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components


Al Sunshine is a South Florida-based Broadcast and Digital Journalist whose career has spanned more than 40 years at the local and national levels. His award-winning investigations have triggered more than a dozen state and local consumer protection laws and his work’s been cited in Congressional Testimony before the U-S House of Representatives. He is best known for his “Shame On You” features for CBS Miami which sought to expose businesses, agencies and individuals defrauding or deceiving consumers, as well as endangering the safety and welfare of the general public. In 2013 Al retired from CBS Miami to set up his own Digital News Business, “Sunshine News, LLC” and Al continues to blog for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association, sponsors of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards”. An avid environmentalist, Al is one of the founding members of the “Miami Pine Rocklands Coalition”. The Florida Non-Profit is fighting to save and restore the last 2% of Pine Rocklands found only in South Florida and nowhere else in the continental United States. Al was recently elected its President.