Free Republic

As technology gets more sophisticated, so do scammers. As bad actors adapt to the times, cryptocurrency scams are becoming a bigger problem, duping Americans out of huge sums, the Better Business Bureau said. In its annual Scam Tracker report, the BBB said investment and cryptocurrency scams were the “riskiest” type of scam in 2023. Scammers are using people’s general lack of understanding about cryptocurrency to their advantage, the Bureau said, promising huge returns on investment for purchasing Bitcoin. One victim, who shared her story, said she came upon a cryptocurrency scam while watching a YouTube video about Bitcoin investments. People...

The internet is filled with scam artists who try to swindle unsuspecting people out of their money. But impersonation scams that use Elon Musk and his bevy of tech companies—including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X—have exploded in popularity in recent years. And Gizmodo obtained reports about many of these scams filed with the federal government over the past year. Gizmodo submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking for complaints about scams that used the name of Musk and his companies to trick internet users into handing over their money. The FTC identified thousands of...

Beware of accounts saying their airline representatives coming to your rescue if you find yourself directly complaining to an airline on X.Air travel has become pretty crappy over the last few years, causing travelers to take to social media to vent their concerns directly to airlines. Everything from lost baggage to ticketing issues is shouted about in Tweet form. As usual, scammers have taken notice and have started to “help” travelers with these problems as the Washington Post reports. Post reporter Mike Hume recently had a flight delay issue on a trip in January with JetBlue and he complained directly...

This article originally appeared on WND.com Guest by post by Bob Unruh Victims’ seek special protection from deportation Under Joe Biden’s policies, illegal aliens have been flooding across America’s southern border – literally by the millions. It’s to the point that Texas is charging he’s failing to do his constitutional duty to protect the states, and lawmakers there have adopted a law allowing state authorities to arrest individuals who enter the state illegally. But now the federal government has broken up an immigration scam that focuses on allowing illegals to remain in America. It’s by having them become “victims” of...

Biden energy loan czar Jigar Shah was a major investor in a struggling green energy company that is in advanced talks to receive a $1.5 billion loan from his office. The Department of Energy’s loan office, where Shah serves as director, is working to fast-track the funding to Plug Power, a hydrogen fuel company on the brink of bankruptcy. But the ties between Plug Power and Shah could add to concerns from lawmakers about conflicts of interest in the federal loan program. Securities and Exchange Commission records detail a long-standing financial relationship between Plug Power and Generate Capital, an investment...

Americans are strongly dissatisfied with the direction of the country and the economy. According to Gallup, just 19% of the public is satisfied with how things are going, compared with 80% who aren’t. Incredibly, consumer sentiment is lower now than it was during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. It’s easy to see why. Inflation remains elevated above pre-pandemic levels, meaning that real weekly earnings are down by more than 4% since January 2021. Rising interest rates have caused the median mortgage payment to double over the same period. In a good economy, hardworking Americans steadily get ahead as income gains...

This is a subject that I wish got more attention. My late husband was a victim of a scam at a time when he was too ill to have this kind of stress. I’ve held a hard grudge since. That particular scam was different but the premise is the same. Hit the victim emotionally and get the money by any means.. Scammer Payback is one of my favorites, but there are several working on various platforms that do amazing work. I watch how they target these low life scum, using their computers and cameras against them, stealing their files, finding...

Older Americans reportedly lost $1.1 billion to fraud in 2022, according to the annual Senate Committee on Aging report released this month, and most of the scams utilized AI technology to clone the voices of people they knew and other AI-generated ploys. During a Thursday committee hearing on AI scams, committee chairman Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., published the group’s annual fraud book highlighting the top scams last year. It found that from January 2020 to June 2021, the FBI found "individuals reportedly lost $13 million to grandparent and person-in-need scams." Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, also a member of the committee,...

Try listening to your elders for a change. Know-it-all Gen Zers are a whopping three times more likely to fall prey to online scams than their boomer grandparents, experts are warning. Often heard boasting about being raised on the internet, the younger generation is increasingly unsafe there, with the FBI reporting a 2,000 percent increase in losses due to scams affecting those under 20 years of age — jumping from an estimated $8.2 million in 2017 to $210 million in 2022. Born anywhere between the end of the 1990s and the early 2010s, Gen Z digital natives are said to...

'Do one in Naples, one in Marco Island. You know, whatever you need to do.' Back in Iowa Saturday morning, Ron DeSantis said he wanted snowbirds visiting the Sunshine State to be able to vote without going back home. The 2024 presidential candidate told supporters in Muscadine that he wanted caucus sites in Southwest Florida. “But I do know with so many people that go down in Florida, I have to figure out — I may petition the Iowa Republican Party to have some caucus sites in Southwest Florida,” the Governor quipped. “So people could just go, I mean, do...

If you expect former President Donald Trump to fulfill even one campaign promise he is making for 2024, you would have to explain why he is openly mocking the idea that he could fulfill the promise that defined his entire candidacy in 2016. The core promise of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was that he would build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. This is what defined his tough-on-illegal-immigration approach, and he even mocked detractors who said that he would not or could not possibly do it. As late as October 2020, less than one...

Earlier on Thursday, a DeSantis spokesperson said the governor’s office had contracted cargo planes to send drones, body armor and helmets to Israel and worked to “get weapons and ammunition to Israel through private parties.” In an interview with Reuters, however, Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, the Israeli consul general in Miami, said his office did not work with the governor to send any weapons or ammunition to Israel through private parties, though he had once been in contact with the governor’s office about a plane that was carrying rifle parts. “I am not aware and would find it very, very bizarre to...

A solar salesperson spent five hours in July on a site visit with Jan, a 76-year-old homeowner, to convince her that installing a small rooftop solar system on her Northeast Heights home would eliminate her electric bills overnight. Later, after printing out the one-page financial document she signed, Jan realized it was a 25-year agreement with a $79-per-month repayment plan. That’s $18 more than her current utility payments, which average about $61 per month based on a review of all her Public Service Co. of New Mexico bills since January 2022. Jan did cancel after consulting with Affordable Solar, which...

After a telemarketer swore at his son nearly 10 years ago, Roger Anderson set out to cause robocallers, telephone fraudsters and scammers as many problems as possible. His solution was to create an artificial intelligence call-deflection system that puts incoming spam calls on the line with a ChatGPT-powered personality, keeping fraudsters talking in circles as they attempt to extract financial information from a chatbot. "This is really an incredibly silly idea," Anderson, who founded the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, told Fox News. "But in a way, I think it's the only way to combat unsolicited telemarketing because we just can't...

Pick your grift... which of these holidays is the most wholly fabricated (hurry and vote before George Floyd's birthday is added to the ballot)?

Glib, charismatic and larger than life, Carmichael enjoyed her first 15 minutes of fame during the fuel crisis of 1974. At the time, she was billing herself as a maverick who planned to “rule the auto industry like a queen” by selling a low-cost, high-efficiency three-wheeled vehicle—the Dale—described in promotional literature as “the most exciting new car of this century” and “dollar for dollar, the best car ever!” You didn’t have to be a professional fact-checker to realize that this was too good to be true. Sure enough, within a year, Carmichael was indicted after authorities discovered that the Dale...

But the claims underpinning South Pole’s success have been losing ground like the ice underfoot that day two summers ago. The company’s biggest moneymaker is a mega-project in Zimbabwe called Kariba, which South Pole claimed has prevented the annihilation of a forest nearly the size of Puerto Rico. That’s South Pole’s business model: help finance projects that can credibly counteract rising levels of greenhouse gas, such as by stopping deforestation, and then sell the resulting credit to corporate clients who want to compensate for their own planet-warming pollution. Yet according to several outside experts and South Pole’s own analysis, the...

Employment scams using fake job opportunities to swindle applicants are on the rise and have found a new, prime target in laid-off tech workers. These schemes—which often involve fictitious job listings, interviews with fake recruiters and sham onboarding processes to steal job seekers’ money or identities—proliferated during the pandemic alongside virtual hiring and remote work, according to Federal Trade Commission. Scammers now appear to be zeroing in on workers who have recently lost jobs, particularly in the tech industry, workforce experts and recent job-scam victims say. The number of reported job scams nearly tripled to 104,000 between 2019 and 2021...

Scammers are duping small business owners into sending the password reset link to their Instagram page under the guise of confirming their identity.Small business owner Dayana Rizal, 27, is no stranger to dealing with online buyers, but the one she encountered on Oct 3 seemed particularly - in her words - "harmless". Ms Dayana, who sold clay mugs on her now-defunct Instagram page potekceramics, said the buyer was a sweet talker who seemed clueless about how to purchase her mugs online. The buyer, using a private Instagram account with a few hundred followers, sent Ms Dayana a direct message with...

Two fraudsters who ripped off donors of a fundraising campaign that purportedly sought to collect money for a wall along the southern US border during Donald Trump’s presidency pleaded guilty Thursday for their roles in the scam. The swindlers, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, each copped to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud during a remote hearing before Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan federal court. Kolfage also pleaded guilty making false statements on tax returns to hide from the IRS the hundred of thousands of dollars he siphoned off from the GoFundMe campaign, which was dubbed “We Build...