Stimulus Check Fraud arose amid the first wave in the United States. Since May, reports regarding fraud incidents have trended down, but are expected to spike in the coming of the second stimulus checks.

U.S citizens were reportedly lost over $100 million because of the coronavirus pandemic and the stimulus check fraud, as per the new study by The Ascent. The data showed that there are about 160,000 fraud cases filed during May 2020 only.

Stimulus Check Fraud Horribly Spike to Over $100 Million Losses from US Citizens
(Photo : Morgan Vander Hart)
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According to Digital Journal, California endured the highest number of COVID-19 fraud losses within the broad statistic. California reached over $15 million in damages. Amidst the health crisis and the long-wait of the second round of stimulus payments, here are the primary types of fraud that U.S. citizens encountered:

  • Selling fake COVID-19 vaccine kits
  • Marketing of fake at-home COVID-19 test kits
  • Robocalls offer scam services like inexpensive insurance that targets landlines and mobiles.
  • Convincing people to pay upfront for a fake work-from-home jobs
  • Stimulus payments are stolen through different forms of individual's identity theft.
  • For exorbitant prices, personal protective equipment is sold with delivery dates that are impossible to meet.

The Ascent analyzed data from the Federal Trade Commission to arrive at their conclusions to identify where the consumers are at most risk of occurring stimulus checks and COVID-19 fraud. The most common scam "topics" that enticed people to involve their money is a travel and vacation fraud that resulted in over $35 million or 2.5 times more in losses rather than online shopping fraud.

It was discovered that consumers reported 9,677 cases of fraud in terms of the relative extent of several types of fraud where the victims were contacted through their phone. These cases turned out to be more than any other kinds of contact methods, but fraud via email resulted in the most losses with almost $18 million in terms of what style has proved to gain more to scammers.

Between the age of 30 and 29 are the people with the highest number of fraud reports. However, they only had the fourth-highest dollar losses. With over $12 million, those in the age 40-49 are the group with the most significant losses. 

Credit cards are the most common platform of how criminals extracted money from their victims. Wherein, out of awareness, victims use a credit card as a payment method for the COVID-19 scams. Wire transfers have the biggest dollar losses resulted in $24.64 million being taken.

Though Democrats and Republicans didn't come upon a deal for the next stimulus package on Friday's deadline, the fraudsters won't stop doing every trick they could make to use either the first or second stimulus checks. And fraudsters will try to bait victims out of their money through getting sensitive personal information.

According to CNET, the urgent messages regarding the second round of stimulus checks are bogus. Talks in Washington have stalled while the stimulus could arrive as soon as a week after President Donal Trump signs a bill. 

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