These tips can help you avoid a scam
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The Better Business Bureau has released its 2023 Scam Tracker Risk Report, which shows that investment scams are among the costliest scams affecting Canadians.
The Better Business Bureau has released its 2023 Scam Tracker Risk Report, which shows that investment scams are among the costliest scams affecting Canadians.
The report, released Monday, ranks investment and cryptocurrency scams together, as most crypto scams involve some type of phony investment scheme. The BBB says 80.4 per cent of the people who reported a scam involving fraudulent investments or cryptocurrency to the BBB Scam Tracker last year lost money. The median amount lost was $3,800, the highest on the top 10 list of riskiest consumer scams.
Crypto and investment scams are most commonly found on social media, says the BBB's Jadyn Yelle.
"They (the victims) are promised high returns on risk-free investments, but this isn't how it ends up for them," she says. "Typically, what ends up happening after they've invested into an account with cryptocurrency, they're unable to retrieve any of their funds, if it's a scam."
Employment scams ranked second-riskiest behind investment and crypto scams. The BBB says the percentage of reports for this scam type rose to 14.8 per cent in 2023. The reported median dollar loss for employment scams rose from $1,500 in 2022 to $1,995 in 2023. Employment scams were considered the riskiest scams for people aged 18 to 44, with investment and cryptocurrency scams tending to target adults 45 and older.
"In this case, people apply to jobs and they either believe they're applying to a new positions or they've just been hired to a new position, but what they've really done is given out their personal information or money for training or new equipment," says Yelle. "People who are looking for jobs are considered vulnerable. They'll pay money to ensure a job and, unfortunately, it's not a real job."
Romance scams also climbed up the list to fifth in 2023 from seventh in 2022, in large part because more people reported being scammed out of money. The percentage of those who reported losing money to romance scams rose 308.1 per cent in 2023, with median losses of $3,600, up 155 per cent from the year prior.
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