FTC warns of scammers after NY Mag finance columnist lost $50K in voice phishing hoax
Federal Trade Commissioner Chair Lina Khan warned the public about scammers after a New York Magazine financial advice columnist revealed she handed over $50,000 to a mystery man who claimed to be an agency investigator.
“Being the victim of a scam can be devastating” Khan posted on X.
“Nobody from the FTC will ever give you a badge number, ask you to confirm your Social Security number, ask how much money you have in your bank account, transfer you to a CIA agent, or send you texts out of the blue.”
Khan said Americans lost $2.7 billion last year because of vishing, or voice phishing — where scammers impersonate government agents over the phone…
August 26, 2019
Three men were busted Monday in New York for running an Indian call-center con that fleeced more than $2 million from US victims — including a 76-year-old woman who lost her savings, prosecutors said.
Long Island brothers Kamal Zafar, 51, and Jamal Zafar, 48, and Queens man Armughanul Asar, 68, were hauled before a federal judge in Central Islip, where they pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracy.
Prosecutors say the trio worked with “co-conspirators” at a call center in India, where scammers would badger Americans on their home phones by posing as employees of the IRS, the DEA or the Social Security Administration.
January 14, 2019
Don’t pick up that phone.
Americans have been plagued with an increasing number of robocalls — and the government can’t do anything about it.
Both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are closed due to the government shutdown, which means Americans can’t file complaints on FCC or FTC websites and regulators are unable to investigate. In the last few months, the FCC has slapped some of the worst serial offenders with multimillion-dollar fines…
August 14, 2018
Robocalls — those annoying, automated spam and scam messages — are on the rise.
So far in 2018, more than 16.3 billion spam phone calls have pestered people across the country, according to YouMail, a robocall watchdog that offers free call-blocking software.
In May alone, the average American fielded more than 12 spam calls, the company adds.
Those numbers mark a sharp uptick and people are clearly fed up: Robocalls have been the No. 1 consumer complaint at the Federal Trade Commission for several years, including 4 million gripes in 2017, the FTC’s Ian Barlow tells The Post…
June 25, 2017
Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday urged the government to hang up on telemarketers who want to bypass the national “Do Not Call” list by sending pitches directly to a person’s cell phone voicemail, pleading not to “throw gas on a robocall wildfire.”
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse with these robocalls, the telemarketing industry had gone behind the scenes to deliver us the last stra,” Schumer (D-NY) said as he announced that he sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission not to allow an exemption to the elephone Consumer Protection Ac and preserve consumers’ rights…