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February 1, 2019<\/p>\n
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Media contact: National Consumers League \u2013 Carol McKay, carolm@nclnet.org, (412) 945-3242\u00a0or Taun Sterling, tauns@nclnet.org, (202)\u00a0207-2832<\/p>\n
Washington, DC\u2014With Valentine\u2019s Day a few short weeks away, those who are looking for love online should also be on the lookout for imposters who want something besides\u00a0affection: your money. According to the National Consumers League,\u00a0which is issuing its\u00a0annual Top Ten Scams report<\/a>\u00a0today, so-called \u201cromance scam\u201d complaints showed a big spike in 2018. Whereas such scams made up\u00a0only\u00a01.54 percent of complaints to NCL in 2017, in 2018 they made up 2.81 percent of complaints, a greater than 45 percent jump, year-over-year. For those who fall prey to these scams, the consequences can be devastating. The average loss reported by victims of these scams in 2018 was $18,831, by far the most\u00a0financially devastating of the\u00a0scams\u00a0reported to NCL.<\/p>\n \u201cScammers will stop at nothing to separate victims from their money,\u201d said John\u00a0Breyault, NCL\u2019s\u00a0vice\u00a0president of\u00a0public\u00a0policy,\u00a0telecommunications and\u00a0fraud. \u201cThey depend on the people they prey on to act on emotions, not reason. There\u2019s no stronger emotion than love, and scammers are all too eager to use supposedly romantic connections to defraud their victims.\u201d<\/p>\n The annual report, which is compiled from more than 5,300 complaints filed by consumers\u00a0at\u00a0NCL\u2019s Fraud.org<\/a>\u00a0website, identified another additional worrying trend: for the third year in a row, complaints about phishing and spoofing scams rose. NCL attributes this trend to fraudsters being able to identify and target their victims better with email and robocalls.<\/p>\n \u201cWith data breaches putting more\u00a0financial\u00a0information in the hands of criminals than ever before, it\u2019s unsurprising that the scammers are sending more convincing-looking phishing and spoofing emails,\u201d said\u00a0Breyault. \u201cIn fact,\u00a0our own\u00a0staff at NCL were nearly taken in by one of these scams recently. It just goes to show you that no one is immune to these scams.\u201d<\/p>\n The overall top complaints in 2018 remained unchanged from 2017, with bogus Internet merchandise scams, fraudulent prizes and sweepstakes, and fake check scams making up the three most common types of complaints received at NCL. Other top scam categories included\u00a0refund\/recovery scams, scholarship and grant scams, and imposter scams.<\/p>\n An additional trend that advocates like\u00a0Breyault\u00a0are concerned about: the growing use of gift cards as a preferred method of payment by scammers. Although wire transfer and credit cards continue to be the most popular ways for scammers to get paid by their victims, 2018 saw a 25 percent\u00a0increase in the use of alternative methods, including gift cards, as a payment method.<\/p>\n Read the full 2018 Top Scams report from NCL.<\/a><\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n About the National Consumers League<\/strong><\/p>\n The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 1, 2019 Media contact: National Consumers League \u2013 Carol McKay, carolm@nclnet.org, (412) 945-3242\u00a0or Taun Sterling, tauns@nclnet.org, (202)\u00a0207-2832 Washington, DC\u2014With Valentine\u2019s Day a few short weeks away, those who are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[412],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18257,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions\/18257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}