“It’s women’s intuition,” Albrecht, the president of Florida Title and Trust said. “I just felt something was off.”

“The first red flag that I received was a driver’s license from West Virginia,” she said. “When we did our research, I noticed that the property tax bills since 1978 had been sent to Nassau, Bahamas.”

Albrecht did some more research and asked for a proof of life video.

“And we started getting pushback with, you know, she’s hard of hearing,” Albrecht said she was told about the owner.

A few days later, she got an unexpected email, saying the seller was ready for a video call. During the call, she said it quickly became apparent she was looking at a fake video, instead of an actual person. The video showed a woman, sitting in a room, looking straight at the camera. Albrecht could be heard asking the woman to raise her hand, but the woman did not react.

“After the second pause, I realized this is 100% a video playing on a loop,” she said. “It is not real.”

She said the video got her thinking about how many title companies would have actually accepted it as proof of life.

“If the woman says she can’t hear and you see the face and it looks similar, ok, check, done, let’s go on to the next,” Albrecht said.

“What I am really happy about in this situation is this title company really did the right thing,” said Marty Kiar, Broward County’s property appraiser.

Kiar said this wasn’t the first time he had heard of scammers using fake videos to try to trick closing agents.

“So far, we have one case dealing with AI,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be much, much more very soon and that’s why people need to be very vigilant.”

Albrecht said she never heard again from the alleged seller, but she did do some more digging. A reverse image search of the picture on the identification provided by the scammer matched the image of a woman from California who was reported missing years ago.

“I felt really bad to have her picture come up,” she said. “The family already went through enough and to see their family member possibly come up again in this type of use, it’s just really sad.”

Kiar said you should be extra cautious if a seller is only communicating over text or email since that could be a red flag.

You can sign up to receive an alert if there has been a title change associated with your property.

But this month, those plans were nearly upended.

He started getting calls about his listing that lot for sale for $160,000.

The problem: he never listed it.

A realtor told NBC6 he was contacted by a man posing as Torrey, replete with a copy of a fake driver’s license and an email address that included Torrey’s name – so he listed it on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

After being contacted about the listing, “That’s when I said, what? So, I went home, I looked it up on Zillow and I put my address in Google, and there’s my lot for sale with every real estate company in the world,” Torrey recalled. “I had nothing to do with it.”

An impostor had begun a plot to scam him out of the lot, and, had he succeeded, “I think I would have had to spend a lot of money with lawyers to reverse it,” Torrey said.

“We hear it all the time,” said Broward Property Appraiser Marty Kiar. “You know, vacant lots are targeted constantly by criminals.”

Walls in one of his staff’s Fort Lauderdale offices are lined with a rogue’s gallery of property-title thieves.

Pointing at them, he said, “You know, unfortunately, South Florida is the title fraud capital of the world.”

And lots like Torrey’s are easy pickings.

“Unfortunately, vacant lots are properties that are really targeted by criminals. And the reason they target them is because people don’t live there,” Kiar said.

To catch them quickly, he’s created Owner Alert, https://web.bcpa.net/owneralert, a free service that sends property owners emails and texts once Kiar’s office is informed by the county clerk that a property has changed hands.

But, by then, a fraudulent deed transfer has already taken place.

Still, it allows a victim to quickly take the necessary steps to protect their property before the title is clouded further.

“I wish there was a way to stop it beforehand,” Kiar said, “but there really isn’t. But that’s why people should just be very, very vigilant.”

Or in Torrey’s case, very lucky.

Not so lucky, those caught advertising property that’s not theirs. A law just passed unanimously in Tallahassee makes that a felony.

“It’s a great law, and I cannot wait for it to be utilized,” Kiar said, “because the people that do this need to be held accountable.”

And Kiar will be glad to find more wall space for the mug shots yet to come.

After Torrey said he was passed along by the Broward Sheriff’s Office, State Attorney, Clerk of Court, Florida Attorney General, and FBI , NBC6 On Your Side put him in touch with Kiar’s investigators, who he said are looking into the case.

More and more Americans are losing thousands of dollars to a scheme that takes fraudsters weeks or months to pull off.

“Pig butchering” scams earned the name from the idea that scammers use flattery and fake bonding to “fatten up” their victims. The strategy has amassed billions in stolen funds — particularly in the form of cryptocurrencies.

Losses from investment scams soared 38% to a new record high in 2023, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report. Of the $4.57 billion in funds reported stolen, $3.96 billion involved fraudulent crypto investments.

“I met my scammer through a dating app called Bumble, where he spent about six weeks courting me,” Carina, a victim of pig butchering who asked to only be identified by her first name, said.

She met her scammer on the dating app Bumble, and she previously disclosed that her scammer claimed to live a lavish lifestyle and invest heavily in cryptocurrencies. After months of exchanging messages, the scammer convinced her to deposit a total of $152,000 on a website designed to mimic the legitimate crypto exchange Kraken.

Carina eventually traced her funds to an exchange in Thailand. She handed the details over to law enforcement but hasn’t recovered her stolen funds.

Pig butchering scams are often conducted using forced labor in Southeast Asia, according to a report from the United Nations. And despite blockchain firms like Chainalysis tracking down millions in stolen crypto, the multi-jurisdictional footprints of these cases creates a hurdle for law enforcement to seize the stolen funds.

Watch the video above to learn more about how crypto scammers are convincing Americans to give up their life savings, and how law enforcement is trying to fight back.

An Amazon spokesperson told NBC6 that they take steps to protect customers from scams and that during shopping events like Prime Day, they tend to see a rise in impersonation scams, which involve a scammer pretending to be a trusted contact to ask for payment or sensitive information.

The Better Business Bureau of Southeast Florida says phishing emails or text messages are one way scammers can try to do this.

“What they do is copy logos and copy a lot of the marketing materials that Amazon puts out and put them into an email,” said Cinthya Lavin, a spokesperson for the BBB of Southeast Florida. “They want to bait people and just really impersonate Amazon. So you have to be really careful with the emails you open.”

Lavin said you should double-check the address where an email is coming from, avoid clicking on any suspicious links it may contain, and always report potential phishing emails. She also said scammers tend to use popular products, things like electronics and hot household items, to try to entice you to click on fraudulent links.

To stay safe — not only on Prime Day but around any big online shopping period — be careful with any unsolicited texts or phone calls that claim you’ve won a prize or say there is a delivery issue. Instead of searching for a product online and then clicking on that link to make the purchase, your safest bet is to go directly to a company’s website or app and complete the transaction there.  

Make sure you do your homework, especially if a deal sounds too good to be true.

“If something looks very, very unusually low, it may be that you’re getting this from a vendor that’s not reputable,” Lavin said. “That’s why it’s important to check the vendors, even if they’re on the Amazon platform. Just do a little bit of research and look at those reviews.”

Amazon shared the following tips to help you spot and protect yourself from scams:

1. Verify purchases on Amazon. If you receive a message about the purchase of a product or service, do not respond to the message or click on any link in the message; instead, log into your Amazon account or use the Amazon mobile app and confirm that it is really in your purchase history before taking any action.
2. Trust Amazon’s app and website. We will not ask for payment over the phone or email—only in our mobile app, on our website, or in one of our physical stores. We will not call and ask you to make a payment or bank transfer on another website.
3. Be wary of false urgency. Scammers often try to create a sense of urgency to persuade you to do what they’re asking.
4. Don’t be pressured into buying a gift card. We will never ask you to purchase a gift card, and no legitimate sale or transaction will require you to pay with gift cards. Learn more about common gift card scams on our help pages.
5. Contact us. If you’re ever unsure, it’s safest to stop engaging with the potential scammer and contact us directly through the Amazon app or website. Do not call numbers sent over text or email or found in online search results. Remember Amazon will not ask you to download or install any software to connect with customer service nor will we request payment for any customer service support.
6. Check what others are saying. See if anyone else has reported a similar situation. In the U.S., Amazon has partnered with the Better Business Bureau to provide consumers a searchable Scam Tracker that enables you to search suspicious communications reported by others by email, URL, phone number, and more.

If you believe you’ve been the victim of a scam, you should also report it to the Federal Trade Commission.

Cybercriminals are targeting wealth accounts by tapping into a victim’s emotions.

So-called romance scams involve building a relationship and trust with the victim so that the target willingly provides access to their accounts or transfers money to the criminal, explained Tracy Kitten, the director of fraud and security at Javelin Strategy & Research, a financial research services firm.

Consumers lost $1.14 billion to romance scams in 2023, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Median losses per person amounted to $2,000, the highest reported losses for any form of imposter scam, the FTC found.

“Romance scams tend to be some of the more insidious because they prey on emotions,” Kitten said. “These things happen in real life, these aren’t just shows that we see on Netflix.” 

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“What people need to realize is that people behind these types of scams could teach a master class in human behavior,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer who is now the CEO of cybersecurity firm Fortalice Solutions.

“They know the different emotional trigger points that we all have, and that’s when they strike,” Payton added.

‘They trust the person who’s manipulating them’

Romance scammers trick their victims into thinking they’re someone they’re not. Over time, the criminal will develop a relationship with the victim, Kitten explained.

Once trust is established, the victim may be more easily convinced to send money, provide access to their bank accounts, and, in some cases, even launder funds for them, she said.

About 22% of surveyed financial advisors with clients affected by fraud have had clients who fell victim to a romance scam, according to Javelin. The survey fielded 1,500 financial advisors in July 2023.

Oftentimes, cybercriminals are reaching out and developing relationships over social media platforms, Kitten said.

It’s a really easy way for them to fool their victims because there’s no face-to-face contact,” she said.

About 40% of people who said they lost money to a romance scam in 2022 said the contact started on social media, the FTC found.

Almost three-quarters, or 73%, of consumers who had been victimized by a romance scam were men, according to Javelin data. For that report, Javelin polled 5,000 U.S. households in November 2022.

“At this point, we’re all exposed,” Fortalice Solutions’ Payton said. “Even if you don’t have a big social media footprint, your data points are out there.”  

Spotting ‘the biggest red flag’ for romance scams

There are ways to detect if a romance scammer has targeted you. “The biggest red flag,” said Payton, is requests for money. 

Here are five more warning signs:

1. Unsolicited text messages: Scammers can use bots that can reach out to hundreds of people at a time through cell phone numbers, email addresses and social media accounts. Some messages are as simple as “hi.” “All it takes is just for one person to take the bait,” she said.
2. Too good to be true: If the person is suddenly very interested in the same things as you, and wants to carry the conversation in a different direct messaging platform, that can be another red flag.
3. Refusal to meet in person: The scammer will make up excuses for not wanting to meet in real life. Yet sometimes the alternative can occur: The scammer might ask for money for travel expenses to come out and meet you, Payton said. 
4. Isolation attempts: If the scammer discourages you from talking to family or friends of the new romantic interest. 
5. Pressure tactics: If the new contact is badgering you to keep up the relationship, ask for money or financial information. 

In these long-term scams, it’s often hard for the victim to see that they’ve been scammed because “they trust the person who’s manipulating them,” Kitten said. 

Financial advisors can help their clients by educating them on what cybercrime could look like. Doing so can “go a long way” to help victims understand when they’ve been scammed, said Kitten.

Here are five things you can do to vet the new contact, according to Payton:

1. Reverse search the image: Use reverse-search tools for images online to verify the images the potential scammer is using.
2. Look at your privacy settings: Be mindful of the information that you share on social media.
3. If you meet someone, take your time: Make sure to ask questions about their background. Keep track of what they say and look for inconsistencies.
4. Avoid financial transactions: Do not send financial information or funds to the person at first ask. Talk to family, friends, trusted advisors and bankers about the situation.
5. Meet at a public spot: Ask to meet them in person in a public spot or close to a police station. If they act “sketchy,” said Payton, “you have your answer.”

Report suspicious profiles or messages to the online platform you’re using and then report the incident to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. If the situation has escalated, report the incident to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Victims can seek free support and counseling through The Cybercrime Support Network, which offers a free 10-week virtual romance scam recovery group, led by licensed counselors, Payton said.

Just as that senior was about to hand over roughly $230,000 in life’s savings, a friend stepped in and convinced him to call police instead.

The suspect identified himself to police as Ravinkle Mathon and said he was a German citizen when police pulled over his Toyota Prius on Briggs Cheney Road.

That stop happened just a short distance from the Silver Spring home where Mathon picked up a box, according to court documents.

Mathon believed the box was filled with gold bars his victim had purchased. But instead, police said, it was filled with tools, placed there to simulate the same weight. The box was handed to Mathon by a police officer posing as the victim’s neighbor.

Mathon was then arrested by Montgomery County police.

His scam began as a phone call, according to Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy. A man pretending to be a federal agent told the victim he was being targeted by a dangerous identity theft ring and needed to convert all of his cash to gold so he could be given a new identity for protection.

The victim did so. But before the handover, an acquaintance intervened.

“Always have two people aware of your financial decisions,” McCarthy said.

A judge ordered Mathon held without bond, McCarthy says.

“We’re not even sure who this man really is,” McCarthy told News4.

Montgomery County police are warning residents to be on guard.

“Law enforcement will never ask you to convert cash to gold and give it to them,” said Shiera Goff, a police spokesperson.

More than a dozen retired Montgomery County residents have been victimized by this scam in the past year or so, officials say.

Less than two months ago, a criminal ring used the same con on a resident of Leisure World in Silver Spring. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars from the woman before she notified police. A California man was arrested in that case.

“I started to get notifications that someone tried to log into my account, that my password had been changed,” he said. 

The Chatsworth man tried to call the bank, but he had no signal. 

“Why’s my phone not working? What happened? I don’t know,” he said.

When Drobman got to a phone to call Bank of America, a chunk of money was gone from his account. 

“They go, ‘They’ve already withdrawn $21,000 from your account.’ Are you kidding me? That’s half of my bank account,” he said. 

Here’s what likely happened: It’s called SIM swapping. A crook got a hold of Drobman’s personal information, like his name, address and cell number, and convinced Drobman’s cellphone company, Spectrum, to transfer his cellphone number to a new phone. The crook then had access to Drobman’s text messages and used text message two-factor authentication to get into Drobman’s bank account and steal his money. 

“So the text message went not to my phone, but their phone. So by hijacking my phone, they intercept my text back codes,” he said.

According to the FBI’s most recent data, victims lost more than $68 million to this scam in 2021, five times more than in years past. 

Cybersecurity expert Stan Stahl is trying to bring those numbers down. He founded Secure the Village, a nonprofit dedicated to educating people about cybersecurity.

He says what happened to Drobman can happen to you. 

“Jeff was not specifically targeted because he was Jeff. He may have been specifically targeted because they ran across his information. But that could happen to any of us,” said Stahl. 

Stahl largely blames Spectrum for its lack of security. He says they made it too easy for crooks to steal Drobman’s cellphone number. 

“So Spectrum wants to make it as easy as possible for people to go buy a new phone. But in thinking about that, Spectrum, and every company like them, has to think about the risk side of the equation,” he said.

Stahl said all wireless companies should require customers to have a personal identification number (PIN) that they must use to make any account changes. 

A trade group for wireless providers agrees. 

Spectrum told the I-Team it recently started requiring PINs for number transfers, but it wouldn’t comment on how crooks bypassed this to steal Drobman’s number. 

“Our mobile carriers have to be called on the carpet for that, they’ve got to fix that. They can’t just transfer phone numbers because somebody asked you to,” said Drobman.

On the banking side of this scam, Stahl said text codes for two-factor authentication aren’t safe either. He said banks should instead use face recognition or an authentication app.

But the banking industry defends text back codes. Bank of America pointed us to a banking trade group for comment. The American Bankers Association said the industry invests billions of dollars in cybersecurity, and text back codes provide a significant defense against account takeover. 

Drobman doesn’t buy it. 

“I want to get the word out that text back codes are not safe,” he said. 

After the I-Team reached out to Bank of America about Drobman’s case, it put $21,000 — the amount stolen from him — back into his account. In a statement, it said it takes identity theft seriously. 

Drobman believes he’s now as secure as he can be. But he’s disappointed that these two companies both failed to keep his money and identity safe. 

Tips to keep your money safe:

• Create a PIN with your wireless carrier.
• If your bank allows it, use facial recognition, instead of two-factor authentication, to make account changes.
• If you unexpectedly lose your cellphone signal, contact your carrier right away to make sure your number hasn’t been hacked.

“All you need is a phone, a laptop, wi-fi and one to three hours a day,” she says in one of dozens of videos posted on her pages. In one post, she says the average annual salary of an affiliate marketer, with no experience, is $177,566. “I made that salary in my first 11 weeks,” she says.

Affiliate marketing is not new, but social media triggered an explosion of interest — and an array of concerns. The market for online learning courses has boomed in recent years, spanning professional development platforms to online influencers selling lessons on everything from gig work to the timeless art of seduction.

Dozens of companies online offer courses to teach you how to get into affiliate marketing. Typically, affiliates earn a commission on sales of products they recommend. The internet is full of videos with people saying they became millionaires through affiliate marketing. Part of the appeal is that these jobs can be pitched as a “side hustle” that don’t require as much time and effort as a full-time position. 

Side hustles have continued to become more common during this period of persistent inflation, particularly for younger people. A survey from the financial services company LendingTree published in February found that more than half of millennials and Gen Z supplement their main source of income with other moneymaking activities.

Ouimet and many others tout a $7 course offered by a company called Legendary Marketer. For that small investment, she says, you can learn how to earn thousands of dollars working from home for just a few hours a day. The company says its $7 “15-day business builder challenge” has “over 800 success stories.”

But not everyone has a success story. Dana Gunning, Loretta Lynne and Stacha Woessner, who took the course separately, told NBC News they signed up after seeing videos like Ouimet’s on social media.

“When I joined, I really thought I was just doing a $7 course. I was very, very shocked about it being a lot more than that,” Gunning said.

The women said that several days into their online course, they were surprised when a “business adviser” met with them over Zoom, telling them that to really earn money, they needed to buy the “Uplevel Blueprint” course for $2,500.

Woessner said the adviser told her: “Sell your car if you have to, put it on a credit card, borrow money from your friends or family. Spend this $2,500 and your life’s gonna change tremendously.”

All three women spent the $2,500 each and said the experience was informative. Their biggest takeaway, though? The fast way to make real money was to resell the same course to others, they said. For every $2,500 course they sold, they would earn a $1,000 commission, they added.

This was not the kind of affiliate marketing that Legendary Marketer promoted on social media, Lynne said. The videos, she said, told her that she could be an affiliate for brands such as Nike and Lululemon.

“But that’s not what they’re doing,” she said. “They just want you to resell their course.”

In online videos, Legendary Marketer CEO Dave Sharpe tells potential customers: “I’ve gone from completely broke to living the life of my dreams.” On its website, the company says it has “$250 million in career sales” and “well over half of that has been paid out to affiliate partners.”

But the fine print on Legendary’s website reads, “This is not a get rich quick program” and “the average person” should expect “little to no results.”

“The overhyped marketing is one of the biggest downsides of Legendary Marketer,” said Niall Doherty, who ranks affiliate marketing courses on his website, eBiz Facts, and often earns commissions on those he recommends. He has researched and reviewed Legendary Marketer’s 15-day platform.

Realistically, Doherty said, affiliate marketers should expect to put in a lot of work and temper their expectations about how much they will actually earn.

“If you work hard at building up an affiliate marketing business for a year, not just a side hustle, the best-case scenario is that you’d be earning $1,000 a month after 12 months.”

Lynne said she earned several thousand dollars in commissions after taking the Legendary Marketer courses, but stopped after a few weeks, uneasy about upselling people.

Gunning had a similar experience. “I made one sale and I felt very bad about it,” she said, “promoting a $7 course when that’s not the goal.”

Woessner said she didn’t make any money at all and quit after a few months. 

After NBC News contacted the Better Business Bureau to ask about customer complaints, the organization took away Legendary Marketer’s A rating and started an investigation. The agency also posted an alert on Legendary Marketer’s page, citing “a pattern of customer complaints” about the company’s advertising and upsells. 

Sharpe declined to be interviewed for this story but said in a statement in part that he takes “all feedback seriously” and is working with the BBB to address its concerns.” The $7 course gives people value and knowledge about digital marketing, “like all Legendary Marketer courses,” he added.

Sharpe also said he’s working with affiliates like Ouimet to “ensure proper compliance” in marketing and disclosure to customers that there are more products for sale beyond the $7 course.

Ouimet did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Gunning, Lynne and Woessner, meanwhile, now earn commissions working with Legendary competitors. They said they have sold other courses, but their primary earnings come from selling digital products, building websites and recommending products from a variety of companies.

They advise anyone interested in becoming an affiliate marketer to read reviews and research multiple courses. Lynne said she now makes a good living doing affiliate and digital marketing, but it’s definitely not a side hustle. She said it took a long time to build her businesses and she still works long hours. 

“There is money in affiliate marketing,” Lynne said. “But you’ve gotta learn the right way to do it.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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The action follows a 2019 complaint the FTC made against the operators of Mission Hills Federal and Federal Direct Group, alleging the organizations have been tricking student loan borrowers out of their money since 2014.

Fraudsters “tricked students into paying hundreds to thousands of dollars in illegal upfront fees and pretended to lower consumers’ monthly student loan payments,” the FTC said in a press release. Additionally, the operators claimed to take over the servicing of consumers’ loans and thus, often pocketed consumers’ monthly payments, the agency said.

Americans owe a whopping $1.7 trillion in student loans, according to Education Data Initiative, so it’s not surprising that many borrowers are eager to take any chance they have to lower or eliminate their balances. 

Unfortunately, that also creates a ripe opportunity for malicious actors to take advantage of those looking for ways to ease their student debt burdens. Scammers lure student loan borrowers by offering ways to lower their monthly payments or even eliminate their balances.

This isn’t the first time the FTC has issued refunds for these kinds of scams. Last August, the agency, along with the Department of Justice, sent $9 million in refunds to victims of an organization known as Ameritech Financial that operated a similar student debt relief scheme. The FTC also refunded 37,800 consumers earlier in 2023 as a result of another student loan scam.

If someone reaches out to you offering to help with your student debt, you might be tempted to work with them — especially if you’re struggling to make your monthly payments. But there are legitimate assistance programs as well as federally-supported forgiveness initiatives that can actually help you get out of debt.

Use these tips to avoid losing money to a student loan scammer.

Know the signs of a scam

Many financial scams use similar tactics to try to get you on the hook. If any company or person contacts you and tries to get you to sign up for a service or share any personal information, watch out for a few red flags.

1. Urgency

Student loan scams often use time-sensitive language like telling you to “act immediately” or “call now to verify.” 

The Department of Education may contact you about “temporary programs,” the Federal Student Aid website says, but it won’t use such aggressive language.

2. Empty promises

Scammers may make promises that sound too good to be true. In scams like these, you may be asked to pay a small fee in order to have your debt completely discharged.

Know that you do not have to pay for any of the existing loan forgiveness programs, although they often require years of qualifying payments or certain types of employment. 

3. Asking for personal information

FSA says it will never ask you for your account password. If anyone asks for your FSA login information, there’s a good chance they’re trying to scam you. Further, FSA will only contact you from one of its known email addresses:

• noreply@studentaid.gov
• noreply@debtrelief.studentaid.gov
• ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com 

The department advises borrowers to double check URLs and email addresses to make sure they’re getting information from a reliable source.

Explore free debt relief services

If you have federal student loans, there are a number of protections in place if you’re struggling to make your payments, all at no cost to you.

You may be able to lower your monthly payment by getting on an income-driven repayment plan or even pause payments for a period of time if you’re facing certain types of financial hardship.

Want to make extra money outside of your day job? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course How to Earn Passive Income Online to learn about common passive income streams, tips to get started and real-life success stories. Register today and save 50% with discount code EARLYBIRD.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

If you’re a last-minute holiday shopper still checking off the remaining gifts on your list, beware: You could be putting yourself at risk for fraud.

“Procrastination is, quite frankly, one of the keys to success for crooks,” Paul Fabara, chief risk officer at Visa, recently told CNBC.

“They assume that you’re going to fall for that last-minute offer that guarantees delivery of the product within 24 hours, or even the same day, at a discounted price,” Fabara said.

If you become victim to one of these schemes, not only will you not get what you ordered, but you may also receive transactions on your account that you never personally authorized.

To avoid that, Visa has flagged some best practices for secure shopping this season.

1. Avoid shopping on public Wi-Fi

Since public Wi-Fi networks are not secured, your personal information may be more likely to be stolen.

2. Use secure websites

Be sure to check that a website address starts with “https://” to ensure your data is encrypted and your connection is secure.

3. Do a background check on web retailers

If you’re shopping with an online retailer for the first time, do a search to verify it is legitimate and see what other customers have said. Even if you’re shopping with a familiar brand, check to see its customer satisfaction ratings and customer feedback. The Better Business Bureau may also list a profile of a company and any complaints it may have against it.

“It just takes a few moments to do some sort of a cross check just to make sure that you’re dealing with who you think you are dealing with,” Fabara said.

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4. Take extra steps to protect your accounts

Be sure to use unique and strong passwords for bank accounts, credit cards and online accounts with retailers. Also implement two-factor authentication that requires you to use more than just a password to verify your identify.

5. Beware of deals that sound too good to be true

If a website has an otherwise sold-out item at a great price and expedited shipping, think before you buy. That too-good-to-be true offer may not be real.

Unsuspecting consumers are prone to getting duped when it comes to the hot toy or item of the season, noted Melanie McGovern, spokeswoman for the International Association of Better Business Bureaus.

If a social media ad pops up showing the item available for an inexpensive price when it’s sold out everywhere else, be wary, she said.

If you do find you’ve fallen prey to a scam, the best first step is to contact your bank, credit card company or other financial institution to let them know your information has been compromised, according to Fabara.

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Last year, consumers of all ages were scammed out of $8.8 billion. And older adults lost the most money compared to other age groups, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

While everyone wants to protect their parents and grandparents from scammers, sometimes these conversations can be complicated to navigate.

“We encourage people to think in multigenerational approaches. Everyone is getting scammed, it’s just a different way that scammers go after you,” said Genevieve Waterman from the National Council on Aging.

From having a lot of empathy to knowing how to report a scam, experts shared their recommendations for talking about scams:

Know which scams commonly target older people

Knowing which scams are most commonly used to target older people can help.

Two of the most common are the “grandparent” scam and romance scams, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP.

The grandparent scam is when someone gets a phone call from a person impersonating a grandchild and asking for money to get them out of trouble. The first step to avoid this is to call other family members before taking any action, the FTC recommends.

When it comes to romance scams, the FTC reported that people lost $1.3 billion in 2022. Scammers usually contact people through social media and then move the conversation to other messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Google Chat.

“A lot of older adults are now going into the online dating world, they’re making a lot of online conversations, having a lot of dates, but that leads them to scammers who are then convincing them to give them money and send it overseas,” Waterman said.

What starts as a simple conversation turns into a sudden romantic connection. But then the person asks for money because something happened in their lives and they need help. According to the FTC, common lies by scammers include “I or someone close to me is sick, hurt, or in jail” and “I can teach you how to invest.”

Other common scams are investment scams, tech support scams, and impersonation scams. You can read more about these on the FTC’s website.

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Have constant conversations about scams

One of the best ways to raise awareness about scams is to talk to each other about them. To keep your older family members safe, Waterman recommends that families talk about scams more often in their day-to-day lives.

“I love the idea of sitting around the table and talking about (scams) and making it more common,” Waterman said.

Goldstein said his mom knows how to use technology fairly well and they’ve had many conversations about email scams. However, she had never encountered the type of scam she was targeted by over the summer.

Because she felt a sense of urgency, she didn’t contact her son before calling the scammer. Goldstein believes that could have prevented her from losing money.

It’s a common practice for scammers to make victims feel like they need to act right away, which makes them more vulnerable to falling for a story that might not seem plausible if they weren’t under pressure. If you’re having a conversation about scams with your family members, it’s important to highlight the rushing aspect of scam practices.

Inform, don’t impose

When you are navigating complicated conversations, it’s better to take an informative approach rather than an authoritative tone. Because your parents or grandparents have a lot of expertise in other life topics, if you approach a conversation by imposing your ideas, it might not have the best effect.

When Stokes has conversations with her mom about scams, she approaches the conversation by saying that she heard about a new type of scam and asks questions such as “What do you think about this?” instead of using language like “Hey mom, there’s this scam, don’t fall for it.”

Waterman also recommends that you have conversations as a family, including younger members of your family, and make sure you make it clear that scams target everyone regardless of age.

“It’s about staying vigilant together as a family unit and not to challenge that older adult but just to explain that (scams) are becoming more sophisticated,” Waterman said.

If you’re looking for guides to avoid scams for older adults, you can find a variety of them on the National Council on Aging’s website.

Be empathetic if they fall for a scam

If your family member has already lost money to a scam, Stokes recommends that you approach the conversation with a lot of empathy.

“We tend to blame the victim,” Stokes said. “When you are faced with another adult in your life who has experienced a scam loss, understand that it’s a crime.”

Stokes encourages people to think about scammers as organized groups with many resources, rather than a random person calling from their mom’s basement. Stokes says that people should think of these crimes at the same level as others and therefore have empathy for the victims.

Discuss a plan in case they encounter a scammer

A few days after the scam took place, Goldstein’s mom told him about it.

“She was really unhappy and I’m like ‘Mom, why didn’t you call me?’” said Goldstein, who felt frustrated by the situation.

Part of Goldstein’s frustration came from the fact that he had a system with his mom where she would call him if she ever felt like something was wrong. However, he also felt bad for his mom because she was embarrassed that she was a victim.

While being online is now part of most people’s lives, older adults have a harder time adapting to some aspects of the internet, which can make them more vulnerable, Waterman said.

“Older adults have been thrown into the virtual world during COVID without any digital literacy training or navigation in general,” Waterman said.

To combat the anxiety and provide information about scams, the AARP has a Fraud Watch Network Helpline. This helpline guides people worried about being scammed or emotional support for those who have experienced fraud.

Teach family members how to report a scam

If you or a family member is a victim of a scam, it’s good practice to report it. You can report a scam on the FTC’s website.

The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

In the spring of 2021, Marjorie Bloom waited for a phone call that would never come.

Over the course of the previous month, the retiree had wired hundreds of thousands of dollars into cryptocurrency per the suggestion of someone she believed to be a trusted confidant. The man claimed to be a “fraud investigator” at PNC Bank, where she’d been a longtime customer.

At his behest, Bloom, a widow who is now 77, liquidated her nest egg — savings, stocks, an annuity — for a total of $661,000.

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The action was supposedly preventative: The “investigator” persuaded Bloom that criminals, using stolen personal data, were in the process of pilfering her life savings. To protect her money, he said, she had to move it quickly — and covertly. Divulging the problem to anyone, even her three children, could compromise their efforts, he said.

Had she alerted her children, she might have avoided the scam: Bloom’s daughter, Ester, is the deputy managing editor for CNBC Make It. (Ester Bloom put CNBC in touch with her mother but was not involved in the reporting or editing of this story.)

The “investigator,” though very convincing, turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Bloom, a retired civil servant, was ensnared in a “tech support” scam.

This type of fraud is increasingly common and largely targets older adults, who lost $588 million to tech support scams in 2022, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Criminals persuade victims they have a serious computer issue such as a virus, then masquerade as computer technicians from well-known companies as a cover for theft. Often, they persuade victims to wire funds to fraudulent accounts.

So on that Friday morning in May 2021, Bloom eagerly awaited a call with instructions on how to access the life savings she had diligently taken steps to secure.

The hours ticked by. Growing nervous, she eventually called the "investigator." His number had been disconnected. She called PNC, but the bank didn't have a record of the employee.

"All of a sudden, this grayness lifted," said Bloom, who lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. "I realized I had been defrauded of everything."

'The money is there. The scammers know that'

Bloom's experience reveals an unsettling reality at a time when technological advancement, little-understood investment options and a patchwork of protections in the U.S. financial system expose more older Americans to financial fraud.

Americans 60 and older lost $3.1 billion to cyber fraud in 2022, an 84% increase from 2021, according to the FBI. Losses have jumped ninefold in just five years, from $342 million in 2017, FBI data shows. Because fraud statistics are based only on reported incidents, its true scope may be far greater.

Older adults, many of whom have saved their entire careers for retirement, can have the most to lose. In addition to retirement savings, they might have other pots of income and wealth: home equity, Social Security payments, pension checks and, if widowed, maybe a life insurance payout.

"The money is there," said Rebecca Keithley, a supervisory special agent in the FBI's Economic Crimes unit and the bureau's national program coordinator of the Department of Justice's Elder Justice Initiative. "The scammers know that."

Keithley — also the FBI's national program coordinator for frauds and swindles — is not involved in the investigation of Bloom's case.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is undergoing a massive demographic shift as an average of 10,000 baby boomers hit retirement age every day. This generation has shouldered more responsibility for their retirement preparations as employers began shifting away from pensions to 401(k)-type retirement plans decades ago.

Consumers ages 65 and older had an average of $232,710 in 401(k) plan savings in 2022, according to Vanguard Group, one of the nation's largest retirement-plan administrators. Further, 65- to 74-year-olds had a net worth of more than $1.2 million, on average, in 2019, according to the Federal Reserve's most recent Survey of Consumer Finances.

Fraud may deprive victims of funds for basic living expenses such as food and shelter, or for the travel and leisure they'd worked so hard to attain in their post-work life.

Beyond the immediate financial hit, fraud has several knock-on effects: Victims who raid their tax-preferred retirement funds may owe the IRS a hefty bill. Taking out a second mortgage or maxing out credit cards carry regular debt payments.

Older adults don't have the same ability as younger victims to earn in the workforce, and it's often challenging to recoup money from criminals or financial institutions.

"Most victims will say, 'I'm devastated financially, I'm ruined,'" said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention programs at AARP, an advocacy group for older adults. "But emotionally it's as bad, if not worse."

How criminals 'hijack' the aging brain

Tech support scams like the one Bloom suffered are an acute threat for older adults.

They are a type of "call center" fraud, which "overwhelmingly target" older adults, the FBI said. About half of people victimized by illegal call centers are 60 or older, and they experience 69% of the total financial losses relative to other age groups.

Nearly 18,000 Americans ages 60 and over reported being a victim of tech support scams in 2022, the FBI said. That's more than any other type of elder fraud and almost doubled from 2020.

Victims 60 and older lost more to these scams than all other age groups combined, the FBI reported. The average person lost $33,000, though losses extended to over $1 million in some cases, the FBI said.

In Bloom's case, her computer froze suddenly on April 22, 2021. A popup window alerted her to call a customer support phone number listed on the screen, supposedly for Microsoft.

Bloom then made a key mistake: She called the number, an action that real tech companies won't ever ask of customers in a security pop-up warning.

During the call, a "Microsoft engineer" told her that foreign hackers had hijacked her computer and stolen sensitive personal data. Her financial accounts, he suggested, were also likely under threat.

When Bloom told him she banked with PNC, the engineer — who was really a con artist — transferred her to an accomplice posing as a PNC fraud investigator. The man convinced Bloom that there were pending transactions worth $29,000 tied to her bank account. Her money had to be moved without delay to a new account, the scammer urged.

None of it was true.

"I fell for it," said Bloom, who retired in December 2017 after serving 42 years as a federal attorney, including stints at the Department of Energy and, most recently, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

"I didn't tell anybody," Bloom added.

The appearance of an immediate threat is an "age-old psychological technique" common in frauds that tends to be "more successful with the aging brain," said Keithley of the FBI.

In this technique, known as an "amygdala hijack" in reference to the brain's fear and threat response center, criminals trigger strong emotional reactions that overwhelm the rational part of our brains. We act rather than think, a classic fight-or-flight response — in this case induced by nefarious social engineers, often part of sophisticated organized crime networks.

Older adults tend to be home more often, use landline phones and be generally unsophisticated about technology and safe online behavior — all of which make them vulnerable and therefore frequent targets, Keithley said.

The Covid pandemic was a disproportionate threat to older adults, keeping Americans indoors and quickly pushing them online. The health emergency "ushered in a new wave of exploitative practices targeted at older Americans," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a 2022 report to Congress.

'Somebody should have asked'

Bloom, an avid traveler, is undeniably tough. In 2013, at 67 years old, she trekked to the base camp of Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain; the base camp alone sits at an altitude of about 18,000 feet.

But the scam tested her resolve.

A year after the fraud, Bloom set out on a road trip to North Dakota. Five days in, she had a panic attack that seized the right side of her body in pain. She canceled everything and went home.

"In retrospect, I think the entire ordeal was a fearful reaction to spending money," Bloom said.

Before she realized she'd been scammed, Bloom had made five wire transfers within 28 days, amounting to $661,000, according to receipts of the transactions, which were reviewed by CNBC.

Much of those funds came from liquidating a stock portfolio — an inheritance from her parents — worth more than $400,000. She also liquidated the bulk of an annuity worth more than $200,000; if she'd kept it intact, it would have begun paying her a guaranteed income stream of about $2,700 a month for the next three decades, starting in 2023.

"This was my life savings," Bloom said. "It's what I was going to live on as a retiree."

When she discovered the loss, Bloom's immediate thought was of her three kids: a "profound disappointment" at squandering the reserves she'd intended to bequeath them. Bloom had wanted to offer the same financial assistance to her children as her parents had provided for her. Now, much of that money is gone, she said.

Her second concern was for her own financial security. Bloom still receives regular checks from a federal pension and Social Security, now her main sources of retirement income. It's enough to cover her mortgage, condo fee, car payment and other necessities — but the financial loss exposes Bloom to sacrifices nonetheless.

For one, she laments an inability to travel as frequently as she'd hoped in retirement. She is a member of the North Bethesda Camera Club and uses trips as an outlet for photography, a hobby that developed during her Everest expedition.

"I'm not starving," Bloom said. "But I could do a lot more [if I hadn't lost money]."

"I've lost a significant amount that I've worked for," she said.

Bloom sued PNC Bank — where she'd been a customer for over a decade — in May 2022 for full financial restitution and other damages, such as interest and attorney's fees.

In her lawsuit, Bloom argued that the fraud was ultimately successful because PNC ignored "obvious red flags" and "textbook evidence" of financial exploitation raised by her wire transfer requests, which were inconsistent with her typical pattern of banking.

According to the lawsuit, the bank didn't take steps to investigate or determine whether her money was at risk. The lawsuit claimed the bank acted negligently and breached its contractual duty of care.

"I'm retired ... [and] I look my age," Bloom said. "There's just no doubt about it."

"Somebody should have asked," she added.

In February, a federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed the negligence claim but allowed the claim for breach of contract to move forward in court. 

Bloom and the bank settled the lawsuit in September. Bloom declined to disclose terms of the agreement to CNBC. (Bloom's comments to CNBC for this story occurred in the spring, before the parties entered into settlement negotiations.)

A spokesperson for PNC Bank declined comment on the settlement.

Asked about the lawsuit in the spring, the bank said it acted within the scope of its legal duty.

"PNC maintains a comprehensive set of security controls to help protect our customers from increasingly sophisticated fraud threats and, when possible, we do our best to recover funds on behalf of impacted customers," a spokesperson told CNBC, when asked about Bloom's case and statements about the bank.

"While PNC regrets any losses incurred by a customer, we disagree with the allegations in this case and believe we acted appropriately with respect to these transactions," the spokesperson added.

'You're basically at the mercy of your bank'

Lawsuits such as Bloom's are rarely successful, legal experts said. Outcomes hinge on a complex web of federal and state rules that govern banking and elder financial fraud.

For instance, there's a distinction between "unauthorized" and "authorized" banking transactions.

Unauthorized transactions occur when criminals get hold of a customer's personal information — a debit card number, let's say — and buy something without approval. Customers are often reimbursed in such instances.

However, in Bloom's case, she made the wire transfers. Transactions initiated by a customer — even a victim duped by scammers — are generally considered "authorized," said Carla Sanchez-Adams, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. And such transactions carry weak customer protections, she said.

"You're basically at the mercy of your bank," Sanchez-Adams said.

Wire transfers also have weaker protections than other types of electronic fund transfers — such as debit card, ATM or peer-to-peer transactions, for example — because they're exempt from the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, a federal consumer protection law passed in 1978, she said.

Another federal law — the Bank Secrecy Act — sets standards for banks to ensure they have controls to prevent and detect crime such as money laundering and terrorist financing. While the law requires banks to file reports to regulators in certain cases to flag suspicious activity, it doesn't give individual consumers a legal remedy to recoup money lost due to criminal enterprise, Sanchez-Adams said.

"Banks should have some skin in the game," Sanchez-Adams said. "If you don't make them hurt, they won't change their practices."

Some states have elder-protection laws that establish separate duties to protect older adults from financial fraud, but they vary broadly in scope, she said.

For example, under Maryland law, banks are required to report suspected elder fraud to local law enforcement and other parties. As Bloom argued in her lawsuit, that means employees have likely received training to identify such activity. Such "heightened procedures" to protect older adults are part of the bank's duty of care relative to older customers, the lawsuit said.

To sidestep internal protocols — which most banks have established, according to industry data — scammers will often coach victims on what to say to bank tellers or other representatives, experts said. Perhaps the money is for a loan, or for a home-improvement project, for example. Bloom didn't require coaching, she said; according to her lawsuit, PNC bank employees didn't perform more than a "perfunctory inquiry" necessary to complete the transfers.

And there's an additional tension: Banks and other financial institutions have to weigh issues such as consumer privacy when choosing to intervene, said Marve Ann Alaimo, a partner and elder law expert at Porter Wright Morris & Arthur.

If the bank reasonably does its best to protect a client and there's still financial damage, it isn't necessarily the bank's fault, she said.

"We live in a free-market economy. And when you own something, you have the ultimate right to dispose of it as you wish," Alaimo said, referring to money held in a financial account.

"There's only so much protection a third party can provide for you," she added. They "aren't the ultimate arbiter of free will."

Cryptocurrency gives thieves 'new advantages'

Meanwhile, Bloom's money apparently went on a global tour.

Scammers had her wire funds from her PNC bank account to an account at the now-defunct Signature Bank in New York. According to the lawsuit, from there, her money was transferred to an account on the cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, which scammers created using Bloom's picture and personal data. The assets were then converted into cryptocurrency — a type of virtual asset — and, an investigation later showed, moved to offshore accounts on the Binance crypto trading platform in the Cayman Islands.

Thieves have successfully used crypto to steal increasing amounts of money across all types of internet scams, according to the FBI.

In this context, cryptocurrency — examples of which include bitcoin and ethereum — is like cash; it's just another way to move money from Point A to Point B. But crypto "offers up new advantages" for thieves who transfer and launder illicit proceeds, said Patrick Wyman, chief of the FBI's Virtual Asset Unit. Wyman is not involved in the investigation of Bloom's case.

For one, using crypto is an easy way to move large sums of money across borders very quickly without having to engage with the financial system, Wyman said.

Another benefit for scammers: Crypto offers them a level of anonymity. Criminals use the digital assets to obfuscate their real identity — which, by the nature of crypto transactions, is difficult if not impossible to ascertain.

However, unlike with traditional financial transactions, which are private, all crypto transactions are recorded on a public ledger, or blockchain. So, while law enforcement officials may not be able to learn the identity of a perpetrator, they can generally trace the flow of money, Wyman said.

And that offers a silver lining for victims: "In some cases, we absolutely are able to recover those funds," Wyman said.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice seized more than $112 million worth of virtual currency linked to crypto investment scams. The assets were seized from six accounts, one of which held $66.4 million, likely tied to wire fraud schemes, the DOJ said.

Wyman encourages victims to report fraud to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center as soon as possible. It generally gets harder to recoup money the longer victims wait, he said.

Bloom reported the theft to the FBI; her case remains open. She's not optimistic about her chances of recovering money via law enforcement efforts. Even if the authorities are successful, she expects it will take years.

"I oscillate," she said of her reflections on the theft.

"I go from being thoroughly upset and [asking] 'What in the world was I thinking?' to saying 'You just have to move forward. What's done is done.'"

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Fort Lauderdale Police is working with other law enforcement agencies to investigate who conned the city on September 14th, claiming to be Moss Construction, the contractor working to build the city’s new police department on Broward Boulevard.

Detectives said the city paid the $1.2 million payment believing it to be a legitimate bill.

“All the paperwork was exactly the way paperwork has been received from that company in the past,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said. “So someone had access to that company’s information, their files, processes, it was all exactly the way we’ve received the request before, especially getting a check from the company.”

An email from City Manager Greg Chavarria to city officials Wednesday explained someone sent a request for payment pretending to be Moss Construction. They filled out the paperwork needed and attached a blank check. When Accounts Payable checked the name and say it matched corporate records, they made the $1.2 million payment.

“They often hack the email of the vendor, the provider of services, then they send what looks like a legitimate invoice, and it may be a legitimate invoice, but they change the bank account details,” said Dr. Pablo Molina, a cybersecurity expert who says it’s becoming more common for government agencies to get hacked.

It was later learned the request for payment was fraudulent. 

“Malicious actors took advantage of our good name and publicly available information to attempt a scam,” a spokesperson for Moss Construction said in a statement Thursday. “This is a fraud case that is being actively investigated by the City of Fort Lauderdale officials and police. We refer all calls to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.”

Since the payment was made via wire transfer, the mayor say the city’s bank is working to get the money back, possibly within a week. Trantalis added if they can’t reverse the transfer, the city would be reimbursed through insurance and the taxpayer won’t have lost any money.

“Clearly we have to come up with better protocols to ensure this doesn’t happen again on this account or any other accounts that we deal with. This is becoming more common in today’s culture,” said Trantalis.

Police are using the situation to remind people to be vigilant and cautious when fulfilling payment requests. 

This is an active investigation.

Sanit Dokmai has been charged with premeditated murder after police found the bodies of his wife and two sons, who were 9 and 13, with slash wounds Monday inside a house in Samut Prakan province, Bangkok’s eastern suburb, said local police chief Rangsan Kamsook.

Rangsan said Sanit was conscious Wednesday but in critical condition and unable to speak nor eat due to severe wounds at his throat.

Police believe Sanit’s motive came from a huge debt the family was in. Police said Sanit is a debt guarantor for his friend in an amount of 400,000 baht ($11,400). The friend ran away and left Sanit to pay off the debt, then his wife tried to take out a loan to help and got scammed, said provincial police chief Pallop Araemlah.

Rangsan said the investigation of the money trail has allowed the police to obtain an arrest warrant on fraud and a violation of the Computer Crime Act for nine Thais and two Cambodians.

According to the police, Sanit’s wife applied for a loan online and was tricked into transferring money that scammers claimed to be for different processing fees. Local chief Rangsan said she filed a complaint to police last week saying she lost over 1.7 million baht ($48,000).

Thailand has struggled to cope with a recent explosion of cybercrime and scam cases. In 2022, the Thai police said they received over 200,000 online reports of scam totaling an estimated 30 billion baht ($855 million) or more.

A new report from the United Nations said criminal gangs have forced hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia into participating in unlawful online scam operations involving billions of dollars worth of revenues, especially in Myanmar and Cambodia. Laos, the Philippines and Thailand were also cited among the main countries of destination or transit for victims of false recruitment.

In an attempt to tackle the problem, Thailand enacted a new law earlier this year that allows banks to immediately freeze suspicious accounts for 72 hours without requiring victims of scams to submit their police report. Once a victim transfers money to a scammer, that sum usually is quickly transferred to several other accounts, making it extremely difficult for the authorities to track and retrieve it.

Earlier in August, Thailand’s minister of Digital Economy and Society threatened to shut down Facebook, accusing the social media platform of not thoroughly screening the advertisements it runs, leaving people vulnerable to costly scams.

If you or someone you know needs help, please contact the National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting ‘Home’ to 741741, anytime.

Last year, more than 94,000 scams related to business and job opportunities were reported to the Federal Trade Commission. Those seeking work-from-home or tech jobs were most at risk, according to the FTC. 

So, it’s important to know what to watch for when you apply online to keep your personal information safe and save time on applying.

Here’s what to do:

Be mindful of where you post your resume

When you publish your resume on the internet, it’s worth considering that you’re essentially exposing your contact information for anyone to see. To minimize risks, restrict resume uploads to trusted job sites.

Use caution with remote opportunities

Scammers often target those pursuing remote work. Use caution when you receive unsolicited offers related to work-from-home opportunities. They may be scammers trying to get your info.

Do your research

If a company appears sketchy, invest some time doing a little research on them. Do online searches to verify the legitimacy of the company in question. You can also contact them directly, either by phone or email, to find out more about them. 

Check the email address

If you get an email about a job from a generic email address that ends in @yahoo.com or @gmail.com, instead of a company domain, proceed with caution, as it may be a scam.

Legitimate companies predominantly communicate using their emails. 

Lastly, if a job sounds too good to be true, it’s wise to approach it with caution. It might not be real.

By integrating these practices into your job search, you’ll protect your details, apply smartly, and be closer to landing your next job. Best of luck! 

“It’s women’s intuition,” Albrecht, the president of Florida Title and Trust said. “I just felt something was off.”

“The first red flag that I received was a driver’s license from West Virginia,” she said. “When we did our research, I noticed that the property tax bills since 1978 had been sent to Nassau, Bahamas.”

Albrecht did some more research and asked for a proof of life video.

“And we started getting pushback with, you know, she’s hard of hearing,” Albrecht said she was told about the owner.

A few days later, she got an unexpected email, saying the seller was ready for a video call. During the call, she said it quickly became apparent she was looking at a fake video, instead of an actual person. The video showed a woman, sitting in a room, looking straight at the camera. Albrecht could be heard asking the woman to raise her hand, but the woman did not react.

“After the second pause, I realized this is 100% a video playing on a loop,” she said. “It is not real.”

She said the video got her thinking about how many title companies would have actually accepted it as proof of life.

“If the woman says she can’t hear and you see the face and it looks similar, ok, check, done, let’s go on to the next,” Albrecht said.

“What I am really happy about in this situation is this title company really did the right thing,” said Marty Kiar, Broward County’s property appraiser.

Kiar said this wasn’t the first time he had heard of scammers using fake videos to try to trick closing agents.

“So far, we have one case dealing with AI,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be much, much more very soon and that’s why people need to be very vigilant.”

Albrecht said she never heard again from the alleged seller, but she did do some more digging. A reverse image search of the picture on the identification provided by the scammer matched the image of a woman from California who was reported missing years ago.

“I felt really bad to have her picture come up,” she said. “The family already went through enough and to see their family member possibly come up again in this type of use, it’s just really sad.”

Kiar said you should be extra cautious if a seller is only communicating over text or email since that could be a red flag.

You can sign up to receive an alert if there has been a title change associated with your property.

“He said I needed to make a deposit for insurance purposes, and it was urgent,” recalled Motto, 58, who lives in Bonita Springs, Florida.

The man told her that she owed $5,000 but that she could pay an initial installment of $2,500. He told her she could use Zelle or Apple Pay to make the payment.

Motto said she should have known then that something was off, but she wasn’t thinking clearly. It was just after 8:30 a.m., and she’d had a rough night. Plus, the man on the phone didn’t sound suspicious — he spoke with a Southern drawl and was “real personable,” she said.

She tried to make the payments, but they were flagged as suspicious. The man started explaining to her that he would send a PayPal request when Motto’s son overheard the conversation and told her to hang up immediately. 

She now knows that she was targeted in a new scam that preys on people who just lost their loved ones. 

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

The rise in passport demand

The demand for passports has surged to unprecedented levels, leading to increased frustration among travelers. As people scramble to obtain or renew their passports, it becomes even more vital to be vigilant about where and how one submits their application. 

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has received complaints about fake websites that seem legitimate at first glance but are far from it.

“Consumers are advising that some of the websites where they enter their information were imposter websites,” Cinthya Lavin, a spokesperson for the South Florida BBB, said.

A complaint to the BBB from a Miami resident highlights the issue: “I went to a website that looked very much like the government website … I filled in the form, made a payment… I also paid for insurance.” The individual’s total loss amounted to $128.

“We advise consumers to put a freeze on their credit for at least three months and monitor that because scammers can open a line of credit in your name,” Lavin said.

Safe online procedures for passport application

While searching online for passport services, there’s a risk of stumbling upon scam sites. To ensure safety, travelers are advised to start their process on the official website: travel.state.gov. Here, under the “Get a US Passport” section, one can find all essential information ranging from forms to payment methods, application locations, and guidelines on renewing by mail.

The State Department is also working on making passport services more accessible.

“Last year, we did launch a pilot for online renewal. That portal has been turned off for the moment while we revamp it,” Andres Rodriguez, Lead Community Relations Officer for Passport Services, explained. “We’re addressing issues and we’re problem-solving to try to make the experience better. And we hope to relaunch that pilot by the end of the year.”

However, consumers should be wary of certain private companies. While they might offer help with passport applications and use logos that resemble official government seals, they aren’t affiliated with the U.S. government or the U.S. Department of State. The Department emphasizes that resorting to these services won’t expedite the passport process. 

Additional tips

The BBB stresses the importance of using credit cards for online transactions, mainly due to the added security they provide. Opting for debit or prepaid cards can elevate the risk, especially if one inadvertently deals with a scam site.

“It’s women’s intuition,” Albrecht, the president of Florida Title and Trust said. “I just felt something was off.”

“The first red flag that I received was a driver’s license from West Virginia,” she said. “When we did our research, I noticed that the property tax bills since 1978 had been sent to Nassau, Bahamas.”

Albrecht did some more research and asked for a proof of life video.

“And we started getting pushback with, you know, she’s hard of hearing,” Albrecht said she was told about the owner.

A few days later, she got an unexpected email, saying the seller was ready for a video call. During the call, she said it quickly became apparent she was looking at a fake video, instead of an actual person. The video showed a woman, sitting in a room, looking straight at the camera. Albrecht could be heard asking the woman to raise her hand, but the woman did not react.

“After the second pause, I realized this is 100% a video playing on a loop,” she said. “It is not real.”

She said the video got her thinking about how many title companies would have actually accepted it as proof of life.

“If the woman says she can’t hear and you see the face and it looks similar, ok, check, done, let’s go on to the next,” Albrecht said.

“What I am really happy about in this situation is this title company really did the right thing,” said Marty Kiar, Broward County’s property appraiser.

Kiar said this wasn’t the first time he had heard of scammers using fake videos to try to trick closing agents.

“So far, we have one case dealing with AI,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be much, much more very soon and that’s why people need to be very vigilant.”

Albrecht said she never heard again from the alleged seller, but she did do some more digging. A reverse image search of the picture on the identification provided by the scammer matched the image of a woman from California who was reported missing years ago.

“I felt really bad to have her picture come up,” she said. “The family already went through enough and to see their family member possibly come up again in this type of use, it’s just really sad.”

Kiar said you should be extra cautious if a seller is only communicating over text or email since that could be a red flag.

You can sign up to receive an alert if there has been a title change associated with your property.

“It’s women’s intuition,” Albrecht, the president of Florida Title and Trust said. “I just felt something was off.”

“The first red flag that I received was a driver’s license from West Virginia,” she said. “When we did our research, I noticed that the property tax bills since 1978 had been sent to Nassau, Bahamas.”

Albrecht did some more research and asked for a proof of life video.

“And we started getting pushback with, you know, she’s hard of hearing,” Albrecht said she was told about the owner.

A few days later, she got an unexpected email, saying the seller was ready for a video call. During the call, she said it quickly became apparent she was looking at a fake video, instead of an actual person. The video showed a woman, sitting in a room, looking straight at the camera. Albrecht could be heard asking the woman to raise her hand, but the woman did not react.

“After the second pause, I realized this is 100% a video playing on a loop,” she said. “It is not real.”

She said the video got her thinking about how many title companies would have actually accepted it as proof of life.

“If the woman says she can’t hear and you see the face and it looks similar, ok, check, done, let’s go on to the next,” Albrecht said.

“What I am really happy about in this situation is this title company really did the right thing,” said Marty Kiar, Broward County’s property appraiser.

Kiar said this wasn’t the first time he had heard of scammers using fake videos to try to trick closing agents.

“So far, we have one case dealing with AI,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be much, much more very soon and that’s why people need to be very vigilant.”

Albrecht said she never heard again from the alleged seller, but she did do some more digging. A reverse image search of the picture on the identification provided by the scammer matched the image of a woman from California who was reported missing years ago.

“I felt really bad to have her picture come up,” she said. “The family already went through enough and to see their family member possibly come up again in this type of use, it’s just really sad.”

Kiar said you should be extra cautious if a seller is only communicating over text or email since that could be a red flag.

You can sign up to receive an alert if there has been a title change associated with your property.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has issued a warning about email phishing attempts that appear to be from legitimate stores.

“It’s an email that can have logos copied from a legitimate company, in this case, Amazon,” cautioned Cinthya Lavin, a spokesperson from the BBB. “It could have deals that appear to be true, but then there’s links within the email that connect you and it can take information out of your computer.”

A recent survey conducted by Retail-Me-Not, a leading deals site, indicates that consumers are tightening their budgets this Prime Day. The survey involving over 1,000 participants revealed that the average Prime Day shopper plans to spend $250 this year, a drop from the $388 spent in 2022 and a significant decrease from the $594 spent in 2021.

Spotting Amazon Prime Day scams 

However, no matter how much or how little you spend, the threat of scams remains. Hence, shoppers need to be vigilant. Tracking purchases, particularly when making many of them, is recommended. Unsolicited texts or phone calls claiming you’ve won a prize or reporting a delivery issue are usually a red flag.

“They can take advantage of your credit cards and start doing unauthorized charges,” Lavin said.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission reported that fraudulent text messages regarding package delivery issues and Amazon security alerts were among the top scams in 2022. Victims ended up giving scammers personal information including social security numbers and even remote access to their phones.

Amazon also provides some guidance on how to identify genuine emails from the company. They might occasionally send emails with attachments, these will always be linked in a box labeled “Attachments(s) protected by Amazon.” These specific links are safe to open. However, any email or text message containing links or attachments that seem suspicious should not be opened.

If you’ve mistakenly opened a suspicious link or attachment, it’s crucial to take immediate steps to protect your system. Enabling two-step verification is also highly recommended for added security.

While Amazon does reach out to customers, it’s important to remember that they will never ask you to disclose or verify sensitive personal information or offer a refund that you’re not expecting. 

Look-alike websites

Shoppers should be wary of social media ads that redirect to look-alike websites. At first glance, these sites might seem trustworthy, but upon closer inspection, inconsistencies may become evident.

Professional photos, often stolen from other sites, are used to deceive consumers into thinking the website is legitimate. It’s crucial to ensure the website is secure – look for “HTTPS” in the URL and a small lock icon on the address bar.

“Take a look around the website before you purchase anything. Does it just look to have one or two products? Does it just have a very little information to get in touch with the person selling it?” Lavin said.

Also, if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Do some comparison shopping for the same item and if there is a big difference, you could be dealing with a scammer  

Making secure payments

It is important to choose your payment method wisely. For online purchases, using a credit card is generally the best option, as suspicious charges can be disputed later with the credit card company.

Consumers should be cautious of any retailer asking for payment via digital wallet apps, prepaid debit cards, or other unconventional methods.

Unfortunately, it’s also the busy season for moving scams.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has issued a warning to consumers to be vigilant especially during this high-risk period.

The agency, which oversees moves that cross state lines, has noticed a worrying trend: complaints about moving scams have doubled since 2015 to over 7,500 complaints.

The FMCSA, however, is not taking these alarming statistics lightly.

“We are taking action and increasing enforcement through Operation Protect Your Move,” said Robin Hutcheson, FMCSA Administrator. “We want to be sure that we help consumers prepare to move their goods across state lines, and hold companies accountable when they are engaging in fraudulent activity.”

One of the biggest scams involves moving companies holding clients’ belongings hostage.

Hutcheson detailed how this scam often plays out: “A company will agree upon a price with a consumer. Someone who is moving all of their belongings. And upon delivery, the consumer will receive a new estimate, and they won’t be able to have their belongings delivered until they pay what is something that wasn’t agreed upon.”

In order to prevent falling victim to this and other scams, it’s crucial to thoroughly vet any moving company before hiring them.

The FMCSA provides a searchable database where consumers can find information about the company’s headquarters, registration status, complaint history, and safety records.

The agency also highlights red flags that could indicate a potential scam:

• If the mover doesn’t personally inspect the items to be moved and instead provides an estimate over the phone or online.
• If the company demands cash payment or a large deposit before the move.

They’ve been peddling “Trump Bucks,” which are emblazoned with photos of the former president, and advertising them online as a kind of golden ticket that will help propel Trump’s 2024 bid and make the “real patriots” who support him rich when cashed in.

John Amann told NBC News he bought $2,200 worth of Trump Bucks and other items over the past year only to discover they were worthless when he tried to cash them in at his local bank. So he’s gone on Twitter to warn other Trump supporters not to fall for this scam.

NBC News has identified the Colorado-based companies behind the Trump Bucks as Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots and reviewed dozens of social posts, online complaints and hundreds of misleading ads for the products. Additionally, NBC News has found at least a dozen people like Amann who say they invested thousands of dollars after watching the pitches on Telegram and other websites that strongly suggested that Trump himself was endorsing these products.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

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The road to Kaimi’s ruin started in December, with an Instagram message about a Japanese monkey from a handsome stranger who called himself Mike. Over the coming months “Mike” and Kaimi would develop a friendship that quickly evolved into a romance.

Kaimi had no idea he had become ensnared in a romance scam known as “pig butchering,” from the Chinese phrase sha zhu pan — the name coming from the idea that scammers must “fatten up” victims first with flattery and fake bonding before stealing their money.

Experts told CNBC it’s easy to dismiss victims of these scams as ignorant or foolish but doing so discounts how manipulative the scammers are.

Matt Friedman is the CEO of the Mekong Club, a Hong Kong-based organization that works with corporations to fight modern slavery. “Ten scams come by, and they’re very clearly a scam,” Friedman told CNBC. “But the 11th one, I may even fall for it.”

The scam often starts with a simple text message: “Hi!”

Many people disregard the messages that scammers send. But if they respond, the scammers move quickly to establish a rapport. The mystery texter might say they’re a wealthy executive. They’ll share images of their lavish lifestyle. Eventually, they’ll try to make a meaningful romantic bond with the victim. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

At the third stage, the scammers offer to “teach” the victim how to trade cryptocurrencies or foreign currencies. The scammer networks operate fake trading platforms that look “exactly the way they should look,” Friedman told CNBC. Victims are “taught” how to trade by their scammer, and the fake exchanges are engineered to show nonexistent profits of 15% to 20%.

When victims try to withdraw money or have run out of fresh funds, the fake exchanges shut down the accounts and demand payment. Panicked and encouraged by their so-called friend, the victims wire what little money they have left. The exchange and their “friend” block the victim shortly after.

It can take weeks before victims understand they’ve been scammed and even longer to admit what has happened to them.

Experts told CNBC that the scammers on the phone aren’t the real beneficiaries of the scam, although they do sometimes get a cut of the proceeds. Most often, they’ve been trafficked to Cambodia, Laos or Myanmar to work for organized scamming networks, according to extensive reporting from ProPublica and Vice.

Law enforcement and prosecutors acknowledge pig butchering is a problem but tell victims they’re largely unable to help. Reported U.S. losses from investment scams totaled $3.31 billion last year, according to the FBI, but experts say many victims are too embarrassed to report their losses.

The U.S. manages to recover relatively little. The Justice Department’s only public action seized just $112 million. Federal prosecutors in New York and Virginia have also been pursuing domain names and individuals linked to the scams.

Dennis, a small business owner in Maryland, told CNBC his scammer “Sarah” reached out to him on Facebook around the same time that Mike first reached out to Kaimi.

CNBC has altered the names of the victims in this story to protect their identities, as both Dennis and Kaimi shared personally identifiable information and identity documents with their scammers, and as Kaimi has not disclosed his sexual orientation to everyone in his life.

Kaimi lost more than $120,000 to his scammer. Dennis lost around $500,000.

‘My love for you will last forever’

Mike first messaged Kaimi in late December, cracking a joke about a Japanese monkey that Kaimi had posted.

“When I was looking at who had messaged, I was like, ‘I don’t know if this person is real,'” Kaimi told CNBC. After a few days, Kaimi sent back a perfunctory message. Mike promptly responded and engaged enthusiastically with Kaimi, before suggesting they move to a messaging app called Line.

CNBC reviewed thousands of messages between Kaimi and Mike running through April 2023.

They bonded over their shared love of travel, and Mike eventually invited Kaimi to visit him in Seoul. They’d go shopping, Mike said.

Kaimi told Mike that his schedule as a teacher didn’t let him just jet around the world, and he’d have to save money for an international trip. When pressed, Kaimi told Mike about his financial difficulties, stemming from past credit card debt.

Mike suggested he teach Kaimi how to trade in foreign currencies so he could travel to Seoul and pay off his debt.

Mike alternated between talking about making Kaimi rich and sending him what Kaimi described as “flowery” messages.

“My love for you will last forever,” Mike told him.

Kaimi acquiesced in January, and created an account on the forex platform Mike claimed he used, called DPEX.

DPEX wasn’t a real exchange, but a front controlled by the same scamming group that Mike belonged to.

Over the following weeks, Kaimi wired thousands of dollars from his bank to Crypto.com, a centralized exchange. He used it to buy ether and send it to DPEX’s wallets.

His transfers started small — the first was worth just $140. DPEX claimed it converted his ether transfers into Tether, a U.S. dollar stablecoin.

Mike and Kaimi’s first trade together was a bet against the Japanese yen falling in value. When Kaimi saw he’d made $20 on a $100 trade, he was sold.

Mike offered to help Kaimi structure a plan to use profits from DPEX to pay off $300,000 in student loans, mortgage and credit cards. In February, Mike even “sent” $30,000 from his own DPEX account to Kaimi’s to help him move closer to his debt-free goal.

“I want to repay you as soon as possible, shrink down most of the debt, then plan a trip to Korea to see you,” Kaimi told Mike. Mike pressed Kaimi to add more to his account and join him in bigger bets. He grilled Kaimi about how else he could raise money, from friends or through loans.

In all, Kaimi sent DPEX more than $100,000 worth of ether. His paper profits grew handsomely: In one week in March, Kaimi’s balance went from $100,000 to $310,000.

“I thought I was someone who knew when they were being scammed, was able to discern things,” Kaimi told CNBC.

But when Kaimi told Mike he was planning to withdraw his funds, the penny dropped. DPEX froze Kaimi’s account, claiming that Mike’s generous $30,000 “gift” was a suspicious transaction.

Mike claimed his account was frozen too. “OMG,” Mike said, “we are the same.”

DPEX asked that Kaimi pay back that gift to unlock his full account balance. Kaimi had planned to do so anyway, but sent DPEX nearly $30,000 to settle the “debt.”

The scammers settled into a predictable pattern, pumping Kaimi for more and more fees and taxes. Kaimi paid $64,000 in apparent penalties, urged on by Mike. When the scamming operation asked him for another $65,000, Kaimi realized there was no chance he was getting his money back.

When Mike pressed him to pay DPEX’s “fees,” Kaimi snapped. “I’ve filed a report to the FBI and the SEC,” he told Mike.

‘I thought of ending everything’

Dennis didn’t have any reason to be suspicious when his first scammer, Sarah, messaged him on Facebook.

“I just said hi and bye,” Dennis told CNBC. “But she keeps approaching me,” he said. “We became friends.”

Sarah claimed she was a wealthy executive at a Chinese electric-vehicle manufacturer. She showed him photos of her “uncle” with Alibaba’s Jack Ma. She sent him photos and videos from luxurious stores and apartments.

But it was her show of affection and care more than her material wealth that drew Dennis close, he said.

“They talk to you and manipulate you,” Dennis told CNBC. He was in the midst of separating from his wife. They shared a child together, and in his messages with Sarah, he shared his feelings of inadequacy as a father.

Sarah offered Dennis comfort. They talked for hours every day, and it was weeks before she first offered to teach him how to trade crypto.

Sarah said her powerful uncle ran a trading syndicate large enough to influence crypto prices and guarantee a profit. Experts say that scammers will often cite a well-connected relative as part of their fictitious success.

Sarah pointed him to an “exchange” called Bigone-Eth, that could only be accessed through a iOS app called Trust Wallet. Dennis sent thousands of dollars from Coinbase to Trust Wallet and gave the fake exchange permission to control the crypto in his Trust Wallet.

Sarah guided him through trades that predictably returned 20%. From late December through January, Dennis bought nearly $160,000 worth of bitcoin for his “Bigone-Eth” account and invested $100,000 worth of his cousin’s bitcoin with Bigone-Eth as well.

It wasn’t enough for Sarah, who told Dennis he needed to invest at least $500,000. Otherwise, she suggested, Dennis’ son would “suffer” because of Dennis’ laziness.

But like Kaimi, Dennis felt he’d made enough. The hammer fell when he went to withdraw his winnings: Bigone-Eth froze him out and demanded $180,000 to release his $1.2 million balance.

The demand made Dennis suspect that the broker was trying to scam him out of his money. It was only in March, months after he began talking with Sarah, that he began to investigate romance scams and fake crypto brokerages.

Along the way, he conducted an internet search and found a company called Financial Fund Recovery, or FFR, which said it specialized in crypto asset recovery.

Bankrupt and ‘scammed out of my mind’

In late March, Dennis spoke with a person claiming to be an FFR employee, John Seth, who told Dennis that Sarah and the exchange were part of the same scam. Seth also promised he could recover Dennis’ assets, something Dennis now believes was a lie.

Just a few days after Dennis spoke with Seth, he got an unsolicited call from someone identifying himself as Benjamin Grey. He claimed he worked at Bigone-Eth and told Dennis that he could recover his money for $100,000. Dennis never provided Bigone-Eth or Sarah with his phone number, and now suspects Grey was working with Seth to scam him out of more money.

But Dennis, more alone than ever, trusted Seth. Seth urged Dennis to pay the fee but keep it secret from Sarah and the Bigone-Eth scammers. He borrowed $100,000 from his parents and sent it to Grey through Coinbase.

Dennis didn’t notice that Grey’s wallet address was different from the original scammers, nor that Grey’s email address had a slight misspelling of Bigone-Eth’s name. Dennis thought he was on the verge of getting his money back, of repaying his parents and his cousin and moving on with his life.

Dennis was out another $242,000 by the time Seth told him to stop talking with Grey.

Seth suggested suing Grey and Bigone-Eth for the lost money. He sent Dennis an invoice detailing how FFR would put a “lien” on Dennis’ Bigone-Eth account — which, in fact, was a fictitious account at a fictitious exchange. Dennis would simply have to wire $42,000 to an Abu Dhabi bank account to get started.

This time, Dennis realized he was being “scammed out of his mind” and blocked both Seth and Grey.

CNBC spoke with Seth, who strongly denied that FFR was running a scam. He implied that Dennis was lying to CNBC and said that FFR did not have an employee named Benjamin Grey.

CNBC has reviewed financial documents, emails, blockchain transactions, and recordings of calls between Dennis, Grey, and Seth. Despite his claims to the contrary, the recordings show Seth encouraging Dennis to send money to Grey. Both Seth and Grey contacted Dennis using VoIP numbers from the same issuer. Both numbers were disconnected after CNBC reached out to them.

Other attempts to reach FFR were not successful. In a text conversation with the number Dennis offered for Grey, the person on the other end denied knowing anything about the interaction with Dennis. A customer service representative at FFR’s Abu Dhabi-based bank confirmed that company had an account there but declined to provide further information.

FFR used an address of a coworking space in the state of Georgia to register as a limited liability company in Georgia. Over the phone, a receptionist at that coworking space told CNBC that FFR was not a tenant there and that the mailbox used on the registration form did not exist at that space.

But the receptionist said that a visitor had been looking for FFR’s office just a few weeks prior and had told the receptionist that FFR had made off with a scam victim’s money.

‘Powerless’

In the U.S., law enforcement is still grappling with how to seize and restore victims’ funds. In California, Santa Clara county prosecutor Erin West is pushing regulators and law enforcement to better understand how these scams work.

West has had some success at a local level in seizing a few million dollars for a handful of victims. But she says without federal intervention and private-sector support, putting a meaningful dent in scamming operations will be difficult if not impossible.

“I wish I could save them all,” she told CNBC. Both Dennis and Kaimi reached out to West, who did what she could to connect them with the right people.

But Dennis’ and Kaimi’s losses form just a small fraction of the billions of dollars lost to scammers from thousands of victims. In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security estimated scam-related losses at over $3.3 billion.

Kaimi has considered filing for bankruptcy. His local Hawaiian bank has closed his checking and savings accounts, according to a letter from the bank shared with CNBC. Kaimi said a bank employee told him his Crypto.com wire transfers were the reason for the closure but didn’t offer any more information to him.

He’s filed multiple complaints, with the FBI, Secret Service and regulatory agencies but hasn’t heard back from any of them.

Dennis said he’s been in regular contact with the FBI about the scam. CNBC traced Dennis’ bitcoin to a wallet that’s received more than 59,000 bitcoin, worth about $1.6 billion, since 2019. The trail ends after that wallet, which regularly transfers its contents to the crypto exchange Binance.

Crypto exchanges such as Binance, Crypto.com and Coinbase are convenient waypoints for scammers because they have a trusted reputation and massive trading volume. All three exchanges have warned of the dangers of crypto scammers, but for some, that isn’t enough.

When he reached out to Crypto.com, the exchange told Kaimi they couldn’t help him get his money back.

“I’m not asking you to take responsibility of getting my money back,” he said. But he pointed out that his scammers had used the same wallet for months.

West said that while private partners in the banking and crypto industry often are conduits for these kinds of scamming operations, they are also ideally positioned to cut off the supply of fresh money to pig butchering networks.

“We are essentially fleecing our entire middle class of their generational wealth, and handing it to bad actors overseas, and nobody’s stopping this,” West told CNBC.

Shortly before publication of this story, Cloudflare shut down Bigone-Eth’s domain name and flagged it as a suspected phishing site. Neither Cloudflare nor the FBI responded to CNBC’s request for comment.

Within hours, Dennis’ scammer sent him the new domain name and begged him to respond to her. Dennis ignored her.

“Disappointing men with no sense of responsibility,” she wrote the next day.

“It’s women’s intuition,” Albrecht, the president of Florida Title and Trust said. “I just felt something was off.”

“The first red flag that I received was a driver’s license from West Virginia,” she said. “When we did our research, I noticed that the property tax bills since 1978 had been sent to Nassau, Bahamas.”

Albrecht did some more research and asked for a proof of life video.

“And we started getting pushback with, you know, she’s hard of hearing,” Albrecht said she was told about the owner.

A few days later, she got an unexpected email, saying the seller was ready for a video call. During the call, she said it quickly became apparent she was looking at a fake video, instead of an actual person. The video showed a woman, sitting in a room, looking straight at the camera. Albrecht could be heard asking the woman to raise her hand, but the woman did not react.

“After the second pause, I realized this is 100% a video playing on a loop,” she said. “It is not real.”

She said the video got her thinking about how many title companies would have actually accepted it as proof of life.

“If the woman says she can’t hear and you see the face and it looks similar, ok, check, done, let’s go on to the next,” Albrecht said.

“What I am really happy about in this situation is this title company really did the right thing,” said Marty Kiar, Broward County’s property appraiser.

Kiar said this wasn’t the first time he had heard of scammers using fake videos to try to trick closing agents.

“So far, we have one case dealing with AI,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be much, much more very soon and that’s why people need to be very vigilant.”

Albrecht said she never heard again from the alleged seller, but she did do some more digging. A reverse image search of the picture on the identification provided by the scammer matched the image of a woman from California who was reported missing years ago.

“I felt really bad to have her picture come up,” she said. “The family already went through enough and to see their family member possibly come up again in this type of use, it’s just really sad.”

Kiar said you should be extra cautious if a seller is only communicating over text or email since that could be a red flag.

You can sign up to receive an alert if there has been a title change associated with your property.

People drive their cars every day — to work, to drop off kids at school — perhaps without realizing that someone could be photographing their car in order to scam the owner, making them think their car was stolen and ask for a reward.

“My trust has been violated, my privacy has been violated,” said the victim of one such fraud incident.

That’s what one SUV owner felt when she saw this photograph of her car on the Facebook page named “Tijuana Linea Roja,” which read: “One THOUSAND DOLLARS reward, I was robbed at gunpoint on Boulevard Insurgentes. They pointed at the driver’s head and then took the car and fled.”

The owner of that vehicle claims the post is a total lie and that her vehicle was not stolen in Tijuana.

The woman asked NBC 7 to hide her identity, since this photo in the post was taken in front of her house in San Diego.

“I have a family so I am worried that we being watched and targeted. Our safety is our concern,” she said.

Given the violence and crime that nobody seems to be able to stop in Tijuana, the Tijuana Citizen Committee for Public Security is not surprised by this type of fraud.

“To commit a fraud, I mean this is something where you have to have some type of intelligence,” said Roberto Quijano from the Tijuana Citizen Committee for Public Security.

It’s the intelligence and creativity that is able to convince people that a car was stolen at gunpoint with a simple photo. That post has almost 300 comments and some users even claim to have seen the same SUV in Tijuana themselves.

“Once they received the call, they call back the victim and ask him, ‘I‘ll give you a reward for finding my car, give me your bank account so I can send you money, give me your full name,'” Quijano said.

The scammers may even ask you to log into a website to enter your bank account info in order to collect the reward of $1,000. That’s something a cybersecurity expert said you should never do.

Neve ever give your bank information over social media. There are services that actually — and we have to be careful with these as well — there are services that actually allow us to login and then it’ll connect our bank account,” said Nikolas Behar, Ph. D. and Adjunct Professor of Cybersecurity at University of San Diego.

The victim said she sent a message to Facebook to remove the post. After explaining the situation, she was told that the message does not violate Facebook rules.

NBC 7 sent a message to the administrator of the Tijuana Linea Roja Facebook page, but we never got a response.

The FBI recently warned consumers against using free public charging stations, saying crooks have managed to hijack public chargers that can infect devices with malware, or software that can give hackers access to your phone, tablet or computer.

“Avoid using free charging stations in airports, hotels or shopping centers,” a tweet from the FBI’s Denver field office said. “Bad actors have figured out ways to use public USB ports to introduce malware and monitoring software onto devices. Carry your own charger and USB cord and use an electrical outlet instead.”

The FBI offers similar guidance on its website to avoid public chargers. The bulletin didn’t point to any recent instances of consumer harm from juice jacking, and the FBI didn’t immediately return a request for comment on what prompted the reminder from its Denver office.

The Federal Communications Commission has also warned about “juice jacking,” as the malware loading scheme is known, since 2021.

Consumer devices with compromised USB cables can be hijacked through software that can then siphon off usernames and passwords, the FCC warned at the time. The commission told consumers to avoid those public stations.

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