I almost fell for a scammer. This one rule saved me - and could help you, too.

By Brett Arends

Scams are sophisticated and come in many shapes and forms. It's easy to be fooled.

Scammers rely on panic and fear.

Maybe the most important thing that Christopher Brown, an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, said Thursday about scams targeting U.S. citizens is that people who fall for them shouldn't feel embarrassed.

"They are experts at what they do," he said. "You are not alone. You shouldn't feel bad."

Working out how to scam people, he added, is scam artists' full-time occupation.

He's right - and how. Your correspondent very nearly fell for a bank scam over the phone several years ago. There was nothing that set off alarm bells. The guy who called me sounded completely plausible. His reason for calling me was completely plausible. He said he was from my bank. We even had an intelligent, reasonable conversation.

The only thing that saved me was a rule I had: Never respond to inbound calls or emails. I said I'd call the bank directly. I went to the website, found the customer-service number, and called. I was actually quite surprised when the people at the other end said they hadn't contacted me and the whole thing was a scam. My caller was that good.

My caller had even offered me a plausible call-back number over the phone. Which was part of the scam, of course.

We are a long way from those ludicrous, misspelled Nigerian-prince emails from the early days of the internet.

Scam artists are on the march, and everyone needs to be on their guard. The FTC says the numbers are rising alarmingly. The organization received 3 million reports from scam victims last year, reporting a total of $15.9 billion in losses. That was up from 2.6 million reported in 2024, with losses of $12.5 billion.

Contrary to popular belief, people over 60 aren't more likely to be targeted, the FTC says. But when older Americans are defrauded, they tend to lose more money - much more. And if you're retired and no longer working, there is no way of making up the losses.

There again, we don't really know how many people are losing money to fraud, because so many don't report it. They feel embarrassed or ashamed about falling for a trick. They shouldn't.

You can report a scam to the FTC here. The Justice Department also maintains an elder-fraud hotline.

Scams come in so many different shapes and forms that it's impossible to describe them all. Someone calls claiming to be from your bank, or your utility company, or your internet service provider. Someone calls claiming to be from Microsoft tech support. Or they claim to be from the Social Security Administration or the IRS. Or you get an email from someone claiming to be your grandson, saying they've been in a car accident in Mexico and they've been arrested, and can you please wire money for a bond.

From the archives (June 2024): This is not a scam: Social Security needs you to update your account

Someone I know got an email from a friend saying they were trying to buy a furniture item from Amazon and could she please email a gift card because their credit card had stopped working.

And now some scam artists are pretending to be the police. Or they call and say you missed jury duty and a warrant has been issued for your arrest. You need to pay a fine to make it go away.

And it's not just emails and phone calls anymore. They'll try to reach you via WhatsApp. They're trying to reach you by text, or with a pop-up on your computer.

Remarkably - to me, anyway - they can also now fake caller ID.

Of course they can hack into your life details from social media. They know the names of your grandchildren.

Kira Krown, a consumer education specialist at the FTC, says that although scams differ in so many ways, there are a few common characteristics that should set off alarm bells for you.

The first is urgency. Scam artists do not want to give you time to think. They do not want you to contact somebody else. They say they need you to act right now.

Don't hang up the phone!

Don't talk to an attorney!

Your Social Security account is under threat now! Your details have been hacked now! You need to act now!

Never, ever act now. Legitimate organizations, the FTC says, do not contact you and say you have to act now. The government never does, says Rich Goldberg at the Justice Department.

The best reply, according to Goldberg, is to say, "I need to talk to my attorney first," or "I need to talk to my accountant." It doesn't matter, he adds, if you don't have an attorney or an accountant. Just say you do - and see how the caller or the emailer responds.

If the person on the other end tries to dissuade you from talking to anyone else, or tries to tell you there's no time, it's a scam. It's that simple.

They want you to panic and hurry.

The second giveaway, of course, is that they want you to move money. (Right now!) A common scam at the moment, the FTC says, involves calling older people and telling them their bank-account details have been compromised. You need to move the money, victims are told, to protect it. And then they give you the details.

In other cases, they want you to pay money - via cryptocurrency, wire transfer, gift cards, you name it. One of the tipoffs, says the FTC, is when they specify the method of payment.

And one of the key strategies to defend yourself - in addition to telling them you need to talk to your lawyer - is to refuse to do anything based on inbound contact. Say you will call them back. Then go to Google, find the official website of the company or organization involved, and call that number.

That is what protected me. I ignored the inbound call. I would only talk to my bank once I had contacted the actual number on their actual website.

Was I embarrassed? Not in the slightest. These people are experts. They are very good at what they do. Remember the people who are still pulling these scams are the ones who have been making it work. You are not alone. There are millions being victimized.

-Brett Arends

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