nfortunately, scammers take advantage of people’s heightened emotional state following disasters, and the Vermont Consumer Assistance Program wants you to be aware of targeted disaster relief scams to avoid while our communities recover from the flooding. Continue reading
The Stopping Scams Together initiative encourages our community of Vermonters to identify scams and share success stories of stopping scams together. Many Vermont partners and individuals are already doing the work to understand scams and stop them. You can help too. Share your success story of stopping a scam on social and use #StopScamsVT. Continue reading
BURLINGTON, VT – Reports of scams to the Attorney General’s Consumer Assistance Program totaled 3,685 in 2022. In keeping with the previous year’s trend, a scam claiming that an unauthorized order was placed, or a package is pending delivery, sometimes … Continue reading
Scammers are impersonating employees or familiar business representatives’ emails and contacting company bookkeepers and office administrators asking them to change bank account information, direct deposit information, or asking them to write checks. By impersonating an employee’s email address or creating a fake personal email for the employee, scammers can steal money from businesses and steal paychecks from employees. Vermont businesses and non-profits should always verify email addresses and speak directly with an employee or business representative in person or via phone when sending money or changing payment information. Continue reading
Reports of scams to the Attorney General’s Consumer Assistance Program (CAP) totaled 5,154 in 2021, up just slightly from the previous year’s 5,021 reports. As imposter scams are of ongoing concern in Vermont, CAP recently distributed a video imposter scam prevention project, highlighting three concerning imposter scams with high dollar loss: the Romance Imposter scam, the Family Emergency/Imposter Scam, and the Business Imposter Email Scam. As highlighted in the prevention project, taking steps to verify can help individuals avoid scams. A simple verification process to follow for all scams is the SLOW Method. Continue reading