Online theft is everywhere
Scammers make a career on betraying the trust of their victims.
It is an unfortunate reality that in a world of increasing online scams, everyone must learn not to trust strangers online.
No matter how many warnings the Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office (GCSO) puts out, people keep falling for online scams, GCSO Captain Frank Copeland said.
“It’s a thing that’s going to happen from probably now on,” he said of scams.
In a little less than a year, scammers targeting Gilmer have impersonated law enforcement, manufactured security issues, claimed relatives were in jail, impersonated major companies, fake businesses, impersonated pastors, impersonated funeral homes and more.
Their tactics are endless.
But they all have one thing in common. Once you send them your money, it’s extremely unlikely that you will ever get it back.
According to Copeland, scams tend to rely on keeping people from thinking by creating a false sense of urgency.
When people are distracted, they’re less likely to notice what’s really happening, he said.
“One of the things that happens commonly is that the scammer will instruct victims to go to their bank, and they demand that the victim stay on the phone with them,” Copeland said.
Another common type of scam is for fraudsters to make contact over the phone, then send a courier to pick up the money.
Usually, these systems depend on international criminal networks.
If someone asks you to give money to someone they will send by, “don’t do it,” Copeland said.
Many of the scams that target American citizens come from people in other countries where American authorities don’t have jurisdiction.
Many factors of the digital age make scams easier.
Reuters has reported that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, admitted in internal documents that it got about 10 percent of its revenue from scam ads. Its staff are forbidden from taking action against these scams that will threaten more than .15 percent of the company’s revenue.
In addition, artificial intelligence makes it easier for scammers to fake being someone else.
According to the Consumer Federation of America, scams cost Americans at least $119 billion yearly. Given that many cases go unreported, it’s likely the real number is far higher.
“It’s an easy crime to commit because they’re doing it over the telephone, and people buy into it and suffer as a result,” Copeland said.
Without unbreakable rules to never give money when called on the phone, one will eventually find your weakness.
“Anytime someone calls you and starts asking you for money or login information or wants you to click a link to log into something, that should be a huge red flag,” Copeland said.
One of the best things you can do if you receive a phone call is hang up, look up the organization that called you and call them back using the phone number on their website.
It’s better to hang up on the person calling than to get scammed.
“There’s no way of recovering it,” Copeland said. “Once that happens, the money is gone.”