Greg's Corner

Scam Round Up: Money recovered in Social Security scam and more

By Greg Collier

We’re starting off with a pretty grim scam today. We’ve posted about it before, but it seems to be becoming more common, so we thought we’d remind our readers about it. We’re talking about the funeral home scam. Scammers have been going through obituaries and targeting the families of the recently deceased. As a family is in the process of grieving, scammers will call them, posing as whatever funeral home the family is using. The scammers will claim the family needs to make an additional payment before their loved one could be interred.

Scammers are constantly looking for victims who may be emotionally vulnerable, and what’s more emotional than the passing of a loved one. If you receive a phone call like this, please keep in mind that in most instances, financial arrangements are always handled at the funeral home itself. Hang up on the call, and call the funeral home directly to verify if there are any issues.

In our second scam story, the summer months can bring about their own scams. One of those is the car wrapping scam. This is when scammers will offer to pay you for wrapping your car with advertisements. In the majority of cases, this is just an avenue for scammers to send their victims a fake check. The victim will be sent a check and told to deposit in their bank account. Then they’re told to use that money to pay the car wrap vendor through apps like Venmo or Cash App before the victim’s bank discovers the check is fraudulent. This leaves the victim on the hook to their bank for the full amount of the check and any associated fees.

Lastly, a woman from Louisiana was one of the lucky ones recently as authorities were able to recover over $100,000 from a Social Security scam. The woman received a call from who she thought was the Social Security Administration. The news report didn’t say what the scammers were asking payment for, but typically in this scam, the scammers threaten the victim by claiming the victim’s benefits will be cut off if they don’t make the payment.

The victim wired $146,000 to the scammers’ bank account, but police were able to work with the bank to recover $122,000 of the woman’s money. However, this is the exception and not the rule. In many scams that involve banks, the banks see the transactions as legitimate since they were made by the customer, even if it was done under duress.

If you receive a call from the SSA, the odds are that caller is a scammer. Hang up the phone, then call the SSA directly at 1-800-772-1213 and let them know what the caller said. If there really is an issue, the SSA will contact you by mail first.