Scammers’ tricks are no treat

#Middlebury #Seniors

They never give up. Scammers are still taking every opportunity to steal our identity and separate us from our money, and the list keeps growing. Here are a few of the scams out there now:

Seniors are getting calls from people who claim to be employees of the Department of Justice. Reports to the National Elder Fraud Hotline (833–372–8311) say these scammers pretend to be investigators, and what they want is your personal information. If you get a call like this, don’t be concerned that it’s an authentic government call. It isn’t. Just hang up.

Maybe you’ll get a call wanting to sell you an air purifier. They’ll claim it will clean any coronavirus out of the air in your home. Maybe they’ll try to get you to put it on a credit card, or they’ll claim it’s Medicare approved and all you need to do is give them your Medicare number. Don’t fall for either of these tricks.

Scammers will try these same tactics with miracle cures for COVID, masks that are “guaranteed” to protect you, face shields, vitamin supplements, free COVID tests, low-cost prescription drugs and much more.

Sometimes scammers pretending to be from the government will try to get your personal information by saying they want to send you a stimulus check, or maybe they claim to need Census 2020 information. Sometimes it’s about an expired warranty on your car or lower interest rates.

Just hang up. Don’t press 1 or any other number to have your number taken off their list. All that does is give them another opportunity to convince you to give up personal information.

If someone you don’t know leaves a message about any of these topics, ignore it. Remember, we seniors are the preferred target of these scammers. Don’t fall for their tricks.

© 2020 King Features Synd., Inc.

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