These next few weeks are among the busiest of the year for many of us. Given increased shopping and travel, work gatherings and celebrations with family and friends, there’s simply too much to do.
We may not have the time or energy to be hypervigilant about seasonal swindles. And fraudsters are counting on it.
Ho, Ho, Hold On a Minute
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has been receiving record numbers of complaints each year about fraud schemes targeting consumers. The center says in 2021, Americans lost $173 million to credit card fraud and more than $337 million to nonpayment and nondelivery scams.
These ploys work because we often don’t know what we don’t know. If your brother sends two packages of gifts and only one arrives, you may not know anything is missing. Likewise, if a gift card you sent has been stripped of funds, the recipient may be too embarrassed to tell you.
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