Impersonation Scams on the Rise
Over the course of human history we can find many examples of people taking advantage of other people for their personal gain. These scams have evolved over time from Nigerian Princes who need help retrieving their fortunes to more reasonable ones claiming to be a relative in jail or some other unfortunate circumstance needing money to settle their woes. As scams have evolved, some of the more effective ones are based on creating fear that if you don’t send them money bad things will happen to you. Being an independent RIA we are required to keep up to date on many happenings in the world but really take heed of information provided by the SEC and they have been focused on impersonation scams in the last few years.
Impersonation Scams occur when someone poses as a trusted individual representing an organization such as your bank, law enforcement, a government agency like the IRS or SEC, often using fear as a motivator to have you turn over your personal information or send them money. When we are threatened with consequences it is easy to believe the individual and our human nature is we want to resolve this as soon as possible.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind if you are contacted by any of these types of people. 1. Scammers threaten you with arrest, legal action, or exaggerated fines to make you act without thinking—consider the IRS, they will typically send you a letter and give you a chance to respond, the IRS won’t call you and threaten arrest for a late payment or an error on your return. 2. Unusual Payment Demands—no government agency, law enforcement, or legitimate business will ever demand payment in wire transfers, cryptocurrency, money orders, or gift cards. Several of these are non traceable and once you send it there is no way to stop payment.
How do we protect you? For most of our clients when you have access to your accounts we have limited actions you can take. You need to contact us to make withdrawals or request trades—this gives us a chance to review the situation and if the request seems unusual I will ask questions to confirm the legitimacy of the withdrawal. We also will not send out your information in any manner that isn't secure—for instance if you request us to send your tax forms I will only send them out password protected with information that people off the street won’t know.
What do you need to do? 1. Don’t click links, 2. Hang up, then verify, 3. Never provide remote access to your computer, 4. if any concerns, call us and we can help.
