October 2020

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a temporary order to stop evictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the order provides relief to a large group of Americans, there are some important things to remember.

There are thousands of trials underway as companies race to find effective vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. Many of these research studies are legitimate, but some are not. So, if you’re thinking about volunteering for a COVID-19 trial, it’s important to know how to spot the real trials advancing medicine for everyone, versus the fake ones trying to steal your money and personal information.

You can help the FTC and its partners fight fraud in your community — and you don’t even need to wear a superhero cape (unless you want to). Your story is your superpower. When you tell the FTC about frauds, scams, and other kinds of bad business practices, you’re helping the FTC and our law enforcement partners spot and stop scams. To make it easier, the FTC just launched ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Imposter scams often begin with a call, text message, or email. The scams may vary, but work the same way – a scammer pretends to be someone you trust to convince you to send them money or share personal information.

Scammers may ask you to transfer money from you bank, wire money using a company like Western Union or MoneyGram, put money on a gift card, or send cryptocurrency, because they know these types of payments can be hard to reverse.

When people who are in jail or prison want to call family and friends, they can only use official service providers for either collect or pre-paid calls. The per-minute charges for these calls can be costly. And that’s how scammers have found a way to take people’s money.

If you don’t usually file a tax return, or didn’t file a return for 2018 or 2019, you might not know you could qualify for an economic impact payment. You might be one of the nine million people getting a letter from the IRS letting you know how to register on their website to claim your payment. The new deadline for filing is November 21, 2020..