How common are financial scams or fraud? Paul L. Moffat, President and Senior Financial Planner at Arista Wealth Management, explains in the newest episode of Arista Advice!
Full Transcript:
Hello, welcome to Arista Advice! Question of the week is: "Paul, how can I protect my hard-earned money from all the scammers that are out there?"
Let me share with you a statistic. This stuff is not going away. It's only increasing in frequency and occurrence and losses. One in ten Americans are subject to fraud and scammers every single year. So please, please be on the alert. Let's look at the top nine requests that these scammers are winning in the digital age.
Number one, you are contacted by someone unexpectedly and out of the blue.
Number two, you are asked to wire a large amount of money to someone.
Number three, you are asked for personal or financial information.
Number four, the offer seems too good to be true or hard to believe.
Number five, the request prompts immediate action or feels threatening. That one is very real. They will say "we're the FBI. We're the Metropolitan Police Department. We are the state of Nevada. Respond or we're going to put you in jail." That's phony baloney.
Number six, the request is from an unknown number or suspicious email. That's phony baloney. If you get a text from an email address, delete it. You don't have to respond to it.
Number seven, the request asks for money in an unorthodox method such as go to a Bitcoin ATM machine and put the money in and we won't put you in jail.
Number eight, the message contains typos and grammatical errors, and number nine, you are asked to keep the message or request a secret. Of the three biggest scams that we've seen in the last three months, number nine is the biggest one. They were told "Don't tell anybody. Don't tell your wife. Keep it a secret." Don't keep any of this stuff secret. Call somebody, talk to somebody.
If you've clicked on the wrong scam link or you've got a text correspondence going with somebody, stop it. Turn it off. Delete it. But talk to somebody and get some reassurance that your health and your safety is paramount.
Please remember to go to AristaWealth.com to get other videos, tools, tips, and resources to live a life of significance.