The calls come from people saying they’re with the FBI or the IRS or Social Security or any number of government agencies; They’re all thieves.
If you get an unsolicited call from a government agency, hang up. Social Security, Medicare, the IRS, the FBI and others do not make cold calls and demand payment or personal information.
Scammers have more ways to con you out of your money than there are government agencies — and there are a lot of government agencies.
This particular tactic has grown so popular that those agencies are regularly issuing warnings to alert people that scammers are impersonating them. Even the Federal Trade Commission, which is itself charged with tracking scams, has issued an alert warning people that scammers are posing as FTC commissioners trying to trick people out of their money by, for example, telling victims they won a federally supervised lottery or sweepstakes, but they have to pay taxes or a fee to get the money.
In one international conspiracy alone, federal authorities said, scammers placed tens of millions of calls to U.S. consumers looking for victims. While the vast majority of the targets may have just hung up or not taken the calls, thousands of people do get victimized every year.
Thousands Victimized, Millions Stolen
The Internet Crime Complaint Center, also known as IC3, received reports from more than 3,319 people over 60 who had been victimized by government impersonation fraud in 2021. The victims reported losses of more than…
