Each year, holiday scammers get more savvy. After this year’s record-breaking billion-dollar Cyber Monday, the FBI issued a warning not to fall for deals that may seem too good to be true.
Last year, “non-payment” and “non-delivery scams” cost Americans over $309 million, not including the $173 million in credit card fraud. AARP’s 2023 holiday shopping scam and fraud survey reported that nearly 80% of consumers had fallen victim to a scam, a 10% increase from the previous year.
Margarita Alvarez, senior vice president of consumer risk programs at Wells Fargo, told USA Today that scammers hope consumers are too distracted by the holidays to notice the legitimacy of their purchases.
“You also have scammers out there working to be able to capitalize on the higher volume of transactions that are occurring and that leads our customers to be more susceptible to these scams,” Alvarez said.
The Better Business Bureau emailed the Deseret News a press release compiling some of the top scams holiday shoppers fall victim to.
Here are five to watch out for:
- In-demand items: Scammers are keeping up with the trends, too. So when parents wait until the last minute and the toy they are supposed to buy isn’t on the shelf, the BBB says to be very careful about buying from resellers. According to Toy Insider, some of the hottest gifts include the Miss Rachel speak-and-sing doll, Godzilla RC and a Batman Ultimate Transforming Batmobile.
- Fake charities: Arguably, the most heinous scams during the holidays are those perpetrated by con artists posing as charities. A First Orion survey found that nearly 1 in 3 surveyors received calls from charity scammers during the holidays. “Making matters worse is that nearly half of all respondents said that they’re more likely to talk to an unknown caller about charities or donations during the holidays, and 42% of people said they were the victim of scam call to their mobile phone that resulted in the loss of personal information or financial loss. Some estimates predict that 21 million victims will lose $10 billion (combined) this holiday season,” according to the survey.
- False shipping notifications: “You have a USPS parcel being cleared, due to the detection of an invalid ZIP code address. the parcel can not be cleared, the parcel is temporarily detained, please confirm the zip code address information in the link within 24 hours” — A word-for-word message I received while writing this article. As consumer spending online becomes more popular, phishing emails and texts have become more common. BBB’s advice: “Never click a link in a text or email that you’re not expecting. If you want to track a package, find the original email or text confirmation you received directly from the store and use that link.”
- Free gift cards: Nothing in life is ever free. Even free samples at Costco cost you a yearly membership. If you receive a message saying you won a gift card, play it safe and send it to the spam folder.
- Part-time holiday jobs: People ages 23 to 44 were the most likely to fall victim to fake employment opportunities. According to BBB, it was the second “riskiest” scam type in 2023, and “employment scams had a median dollar loss of $1,995, significantly higher than the overall median dollar loss of $100 reported for all scam types.”
The moral of the story is if it seems too good to be true, take a second look.