Each year, thousands of Nevadans are cheated out of their money.
The Federal Trade Commission said every day in Nevada, about 120 people are victimized by scammers.
In 2021, as the delta variant took hold, the state saw a 22% increase in fraud reports. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police say money lost to fraud increased from $36.5 million to about $70 million last year.
And if you saw Thursday’s headlines, you read about someone being scammed out of $500,000 in Bitcoin. Most people shrug or shake their heads at those stories. There’s one born every minute, they tell themselves, until it happens to them.
Scammers today are not simpletons: the schemes they dream up to get your money can be extremely sophisticated and believable.
‘MORE AND MORE COMPLEX’
“We have been very busy the last few years … mainly we’re seeing a lot of imposter scams,” said Laura Tucker, the deputy attorney general.
These are scams where the scammer pretends to be someone they’re not, such as a grandparent scam. She said a grandparent scam is when the victim is called by the scammer, pretending to be their relative in an emergency. They’ll tell the victim they need money immediately for a hospital or jail scenario.
Get a text from your “bank” that looks a little shady? It will usually come with a link that goes to a fake website, or maybe you get a call from someone pretending to be at your bank, asking for your information. That’s what she’s talking about.
Or when the “power company” calls,…
