Hacker's Brief

The following is information on scams that are happing around the state.

Letter Scam Impersonating TD Canada Trust: A Laramie citizen reported a letter (snail mail, not email) with a Canadian postmark from Daniel Tiber. Tiber claims to be from Canada Trust and says that a deceased customer didn't have beneficiary status and Daniel is looking for his next of kin. The email address Daniel asks you to contact him with is a parked domain (a website address that isn't active) and is not part of Canada Trust's list of website addresses. Apparently, this is a nationwide scam because a Facebook post on the real TD site discussed this same letter: https://www.facebook.com/TDBank/posts/4726572250774561/. In looking at the Canadian Complaints Board, the same scam occurred in 2017 but the letter was from Paul Alfred Thomas.

Norton LifeLock Impersonation: Ironically, the popular identity theft insurance was reported as a scam email by a Sheridan citizen. Watch for an email with the subject line of "#@PAYMENT DETAIL INVOICE:#NT125YF92#S" from a Gmail address. The branding is convincing and the invoice is for $449.99. Don't reply or call the number. It's fake.

Lithium Battery Scam: With the shortage of lithium in the news, a Laramie citizen reported a potential scam email from innoses.com (a legitimate website and US company), but the sender is from China. Just remember if you didn't request the information, it is probably a scam.

FTC Alert – Student Debt Relief: Remember to only apply at StudentAid.gov/DebtRelief. Nowhere else. There is no fee to apply and the real application will ask you for your name, birth date, SSN, phone number and address but will not ask you to upload any documents or ask for your banking or credit card information. Pay close attention to the email addresses: real emails will only come from noreply@studentaid.gov, noreply@debtrelief.studentaid.gov, or ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com.

AARP Military & Veterans Scam Alert: Veterans, active-duty service members and military families are nearly 40 percent more likely than the general population to lose money to scams and fraud. According to the Federal Trade Commission, reported fraud attacks against our nation's heroes and their families jumped 69 percent from 2020 to 2021. Read how to protect yourself here: https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/sms-text-alerts.html

Please report scams you may experience to phishing@cyberwyoming.org or to AARP Fraud Watch Network (any age welcome) Helpline 877-908-3360