Online Scams on the Rise
Well, we hope this hasn’t happened to you, but based on the number of calls we get every day, it’s happening to lots of people. There are online scams that are going through the roof. We’re seeing people lose tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to these online scammers, and according to the FBI, it’s more than 122 billion in the last calendar year.

Increasing Cases and Impact
We work with a lot of government agencies on these cases, and we’re seeing that it’s not only not getting better, it’s getting worse. The number of cases is going through the roof. We had a conversation with a client yesterday where the person was sending tens of thousands of dollars. The total was 300 some thousand lost, and they had just sent another 10,000 yesterday because the scammer said in order to get your money back, you have to pay income tax on your profits. And so they sent them $10,000 to pay the income tax and then they came back and said, well we flagged your account as a money laundering high-profile account, so you have to pay another $20,000 for an investigation.

Scammer Tactics
Right, the scammers have a million ways to ask you for money. They have a script, they have a 100 checklist script to talk to you about sending money in. They start out small, they usually only ask for a few hundred or $1,000, and they keep showing you these crazy and high returns on your money, and it gets you to send them more. They know exactly what to say, they know how to structure the words that they tell you, they structure the emails, they tell you their videos to make it very appealing to send them money. It’s not your fault, they know what they’re doing. They use psychology, it’s like a Jedi mind trick to get you to send money.

Next Steps if You Are a Victim
And once the money’s in, now you have to go through the trouble of figuring out how to get it back, and that’s where an investigation can come in, whether it’s private sector or public sector. Before we go any further, if you do want more information about that, you can actually click the link below to schedule a consultation with a licensed private investigator to go over your case specifically. It’s a one-on-one, undivided attention, private video consultation that we can talk about your case.

Immediate Actions for Victims
But if you are a victim, a couple of things you want to do right away: first of all, don’t send any more money. But also, don’t necessarily stop communication because if you do have an open line of communication, if we do an investigation, sometimes that helps get into their system. In addition, you want to make sure that you make yourself aware of any personal information they have about you. Do they have a copy of your driver’s license? Do they have access to your bank accounts? Do they have maybe your credit card number? If they do, you want to start canceling those things or changing them.

Reporting to Authorities
And last but not least, report it to the IC3. The IC3 is a division of the FBI that handles these kinds of crimes. It stands for Internet Crime Complaint Center, and if you are a victim, you want to get logged in. Now, they’re not going to probably take your case and start investigating it, but at least if down the road this organization that took your money starts to pop up on their radar, you’ll already be logged in as a victim.

Further Information and Consultation
So those are the steps to take. If you do want more information, check out our website, watch our videos, or consider doing a consultation with an investigator so we can get to the bottom of what happened to your money.