You Won’t Believe How Much Scammers Stole Last Year!

When I was a kid, sometimes my parents would embellish a bit about a potential outcome when trying to discourage me from doing something that could be harmful or dangerous to me. I guess the truth wouldn’t have sunk into my young mind, so making things sound so wildly unbelievable, I would believe it.  

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And if I’m being honest, I did the same with my granddaughter when she was younger.  

I’m beginning to think that those who scam people out of their hard-earned money do something similar. They create stories that invoke emotion, and emotional reactions to trip people up.  

I wrote about this just last week, and then two days later, I nearly fell for an email stating that I was about to be billed an astronomical amount of money for an account that was coming due.  

It wasn’t until I hovered my mouse over the email address of the person sending me the message that I realized it was a hoax. But I just about clicked on something I shouldn't have.  

How Much Was Scammed Last Year?

An article from AARP says that the FBI reported that something similar is happening to victims because they’re being asked to make a payment in cryptocurrency. Nearly 17 billion dollars was bilked away from people not realizing they were being fooled. 

The jerks, I mean suspects, spin a story so convincing to someone who probably has little to no knowledge of cryptocurrency who how to use it properly, they do what my parents did to me and tell a story that sounds so out there it could only be true.  

The report released by the FBI says that overall last year, nearly 5 billion dollars, that’s billion with a “b”, was stolen from victims last year, and the average loss per person was around $83,000.  

Scams Of Love

We’ve all heard stories like the “Dirty John” story, where someone pretends to fall in love with someone to steal their money, and that is still a very popular scam.  

The FBI says that almost 400 hundred million dollars was taken last year in this type of scam. 

Tech Support Scams

Another area that is tripping people up is being offered tech support or going to a website that isn’t really designed to help people. Remember, scammers will spend money on a fake website to get it to the top of search engines so people will find it easier.  

Over $982 million dollars was stolen this way.  

Investment scams are really popular targeting those 60 and older according to the story from AARP.  

How To Protect Yourself

Things you can do to protect yourself include: 

Be careful about what you click on. Don’t click on emails or texts messages that come in unsolicited.  

If you fall victim to one of these things, don’t be embarrassed. Report these incidents to the authorities. They need to know these things; they can’t investigate what they don’t know. 

Let this new report from the FBI be a reminder to you that those trying to take advantage of you are working overtime to try to get your information. Safeguard yourself and your family's security.