Student loan scams make up about 10% of all robocall traffic, according to RoboKiller.
Americans have lost billions of dollars to student loan scammers this year as the Biden administration works to provide student debt forgiveness to tens of millions of borrowers. Scammers capitalized on the buzz and confusion around loan forgiveness this fall, convincing many people to part with their money and personal information.
“Scammers watch the news,” said Giulia Porter, vice president at the call and text blocking app RoboKiller. “They’re following trends and they are designing more believable scams.”
Scammers have stolen $5 billion from Americans in student loan-related scams this year according to RoboKiller’s estimates. The company uses Federal Trade Commission data on reported financial losses as well as its own data on scam types and call volume to come up with its estimates. In 2021, the FTC received 2.8 million fraud reports—a quarter of which also reported financial losses that added up to $5.9 billion in total reported losses for the year. That total doesn’t include monetary losses as a result of identity theft.
So far this year, RoboKiller has counted about 700 million student loan-related robocalls per month. The volume of fraudulent texts spiked in August after the Biden administration announced its plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, Porter said. Before the announcement, RoboKiller was counting between…
