The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Ethnic Media Services (EMS) hosted an event in Cleveland Ohio on September 24, 2024 dealing with Spotting and Avoiding Scams – especially for the ethnic communities. We spoke with Larissa Bungo who is a senior attorney in the Division of Consumer and Business Education of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. She told of the prevalence of Imposter Scams and how the FTC has a new Imposter Rule to combat them. In Imposter Scams someone pretends to be someone they are not and contacts you out of the blue and tries to distract you and convince you to act urgently. They want you to pay in cash or gift cards or wire transfer or the like which the government and legitimate companies will never do. She advises everyone to sign up for Consumer Alerts at ftc.gov/consumeralerts. She said the best defense is to share information about preventing and reporting scams. She said that people can report scams anonymously, in their own language and only share as much information as they want – but it is very important to report scams. See more from the FTC and EMS event in Cleveland with more tips to spot and avoid scams. [ Ссылка ]
