Americans have lost $13.4 million to coronavirus-related fraud since the beginning of the year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The figure is based on 18,235 reports related to COVID-19 that the agency has received from consumers since January 1, according to a blog post published Wednesday by Paul Witt, lead data analyst in the FTC’s Division of Consumer Response and Operations.
Because not all consumers may have reported fraud to the agency, the true dollar figure could be much higher. The top complaint categories for COVID-19 scams are related to travel and vacations, online shopping, bogus text messages and imposter scams, whereby the con artist pretends to be someone they’re not, according to Witt… CNBC News
