If you are going to book an ABB in Ukraine: look for a host with reviews going back years; read the reviews to see if guests mention being in Ukraine (some rumors are that real hosts in other places have changed their locations to Ukraine) and best of all, rent a room in a shared home where the host lives in the home, too…and has reviews mentioning being Ukraine based.
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Another example of scammers calling people and impersonating a bank official was in the NYT today. The article (behind a paywall) says in part
In Mr. Faunce’s case, it started with a text message that appeared to come from Wells Fargo’s fraud department, asking him to verify whether he had made a payment through Zelle. Moments after he texted back “no,” his phone rang. The caller ID flagged the number as Wells Fargo. (emphasis added) The man on the line identified himself as a Wells Fargo employee and told Mr. Faunce that a thief was trying to empty his bank account using Zelle. To stop the transactions, the man said, Mr. Faunce would need to send the money back to himself. Behind the scenes, the thief had linked his account, which was also at Wells Fargo, to Mr. Faunce’s phone number.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-zelle-banks.html
spammers can easily appear to be your bank or credit card company contacting you. If you get such a text or call never reply or answer. Instead call the fraud dept directly yourself using the number on the back of your credit card or ATM card.
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Or you can donate directly to Airbnb.org. That is the charity arm of Airbnb. They are providing free housing for refugees.
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Really scary that scammers can link accounts like that. My 90+ y/o mother received two Medicare scam calls early in the morning the other day. Makes me so angry.
See today’s Boston Globe. 80 yr old retired Episcopalian vicar scammed out of $8.5K when he clicked on something and his computer flashed frantically that is CC account had been hacked. He called the number on the screen and was talked into buying lots of gift cards at Macy’s and Lowes and read the #'s on the back to the thief.
1—I cannot believe people still fall for these. He spoke to someone who said they were with Microsoft–why would they talk to you about your bank??
2–You would think that mental alarms would go off at Macy’s or Lowes when an elderly person buys a handful of gift cards at one time–I would expect the store clerks to be more on top of things and ask if the person had a problem?
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That’s really sad. I wish everyone could understand at least the basics of someone asking you to buy gift cards is 100% a scam. It’s mystifying that that’s a tough concept to get across. Our scam alert on the local news seems to mention it every time they make a report (at least weekly).
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I’ve been getting those calls too. They’ve really picked up recently, but luckily I don’t get them everyday. They’re so annoying!
@somemom I get those too! I also get fake ones from Amazon and Apple. I just delete them.
For a while, I was getting texts with random ads. Like “MAJOR DISCOUNTS ON RAYBANS! BUY NOW!” I just deleted them. I never clicked on the links in the texts. I haven’t gotten any of these recently, thank god!
My stepdad almost got pulled into one of those gift card scams. He got an email that looked like it was from an old friend of his, saying that they were stuck at home and needed to get google play gift cards. If I hadn’t called my father would’ve gone to Lowe’s and bought the play cards and clicked on the link in the email.
Sadly, he did fall for an Amazon scam. He came very close to loosing all his money, but luckily H and I jumped into action and we got everything solved. This scam made it look like an unauthorized purchase was made on his Amazon account and his security was compromised.
Definitely frustrating, but I’m glad you were there to help.
I think I mentioned it long ago on this thread, but my FIL got one of the scam calls saying, “Your grandson’s in jail and needs help.” I loved FIL’s reply. It was something to the effect of, “If he’s in jail he probably should be. Keep him.” Then he called H, just to be sure.
I suspect it’s a good rule for all of us to run any possible issue through others we know - with us calling them - just to keep us grounded. This can be family, good friends, or us calling banks, etc.
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I was glad too! Except my poor stepfather was quite down in the dumps after the Amazon scam. He said it made him feel like he was stupid and it was sign he was getting too old. Luckily, his tax guy said it can happen to anyone at any age.
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I’ve gotten those too! My D gets those all the time…she said she got three the other day!
I have Verizon Wireless Prepaid. On the last day of each month I get a text message that my automatic payment has been received. Yesterday I got a text message reading “VZW Free Message: Your payment has been received. Here is a gift for your continued loyalty to Verizon.” This was followed by a hyperlink. Seemed unusual but the kicker was that the final words after the hyperlink were two words in Russian script!
Well, that’s rather telling! Also, it’s not yet the last day of the month.
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I don’t think that these scammers are very bright.
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I got yet another “vendor payment request” by email today, supposedly from the President of NAMI Maine. I guess the scammers just go through the records and find out non-profit board officers’ names and email addresses. This scam attempt came from the email address presidentmailmee2987@aol.com. Ha!
I’ve been getting invoices and bills from Norton daily for weeks now. We are NOT customers and keep putting it in spam but every day a new one.
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Those fake Norton ones are the only spam that get through my gmail. Shows up in Primary mail, not even Promotions. Don’t how they are doing it, but it’s super annoying.
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I just got a call that I think was a SCAM. I received a voicemail (that was marked possible scam) and the caller said it was for a student loan forgiveness, and that the application had to be completed by the time the ‘pause’ is over. It left a number to return, not an 800 number but a number in Pennsylvania. I called , answered by a live person without any accent, and said I assumed it was for one of my kids but I didn’t know which. He said these were for different federal loan forgiveness programs. I said well one of my kids has a job that wouldn’t qualify and the other was back in grad school so had to apply for the deferral.
Line went dead. Dialed again and they said that number was not in service. Dialed again, same thing.
Do you think they discovered the scam in the time I was on the phone and shut down the lines? I’m sure my number was the one used for all schools and loan info when my kids were first in school, but it could have been just a general scam thing looking for idiots who are willing to give their name and SSN (I’d NEVER give that on the phone) and hoping to hit on some people with student loans.
It is more than likely a general scam. My husband and I get these messages. No loans of any kind here.
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