The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning of a number of schemes profiting from the upcoming U.S. normal election to rip-off folks out of their cash or private knowledge.
The fraudsters exploit the elevated professional exercise surrounding the elections to rip-off folks by impersonating actual candidates and political actions.
Most often, the objective of those scams is to steal folks’s knowledge, cash, or each.
“The FBI is warning the public about scammers exploiting the 2024 U.S. General election to perpetrate multiple types of financial fraud schemes,” reads the general public service announcement.
“Scammers use the names, images, logos, and slogans of candidates to fraudulently solicit campaign contributions, sell merchandise (which is never sent to the purchaser), or steal victim personally identifiable information (PII) that can be used for other fraud,” provides FBI in the identical PSA.
The FBI has highlighted 4 essential kinds of scams throughout election intervals.
- Funding pool: Victims put money into a “guaranteed” marketing campaign fund that guarantees a payout after the candidate wins. They’re additionally inspired to recruit others to extend their potential earnings.
- Political motion committees (PACs): Fraudsters pose as actual PACs or marketing campaign committees, tricking victims into making “donations” that the scammers pocket as a substitute.
- Marketing campaign merchandise: Victims are drawn to purchase campaign-branded gadgets from misleading web sites, by no means receiving the merchandise they paid for, and preying on election enthusiasm.
- Voter registration alerts: Victims obtain pretend alerts to re-register to vote by clicking on the supplied hyperlink. This leads them to fraudulent websites designed to steal private info for id theft or additional scams.
Quite a few pump-and-dump cryptocurrency scams have additionally been created lately utilizing themes surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump to push new tokens.
To guard in opposition to these scams, deal with all unsolicited communications with warning and disbelief, and keep away from sharing private info or sending cash to unknown individuals.
It’s potential to verify the authenticity of claims of political social gathering affiliation by visiting the Federal Fee (FEC) web site.
The FBI notes that donations to political campaigns are by no means investments, and there will be no optimistic return from them.
For those who obtain a fraudulent request, reporting all particulars to the IC3 shortly is essential in stopping the scammers and defending others from falling victims.
