Ethnic Media Services News Media Roundtable– Part 2

Continuation from Part 1: Todd Kossow, Director of the Midwest Region of the Federal Trade Commission. There is massive consumer fraud in the United States.

What are the main types of COVID-related scams? Scammers pitching so-called treatments and cures for COVID-19 without any proof that they work.

The FTC has sent warning letters to nearly 250 companies making such claims telling them to cut it out. Scammers follow the money, like predators on a blood trail, pretending to be part of U.S. government to snatch up people’s stimulus checks.

They’re trying to rip off small businesses by saying that they can get them business loans under the Paycheck Protection Program when they really cannot and they’re impersonating contact tracers by reporting people to people that they’d come into contact with someone who’s tested positive for the virus and then they try to get their personal information.

With so many millions financially impacted by the pandemic, there are escalating scams offering to help people who are behind on their mortgage or other debts, just to rip off all large upfront fees. That’s a red flag of a scam because such upfront fees for those types of debt relief services are illegal under the FTC’s rules.

Every five or six years or so, the FTC conducts a national survey to help us understand what the fraud trends are nationally and we recently announced the results of a survey that was conducted in 2017.