It is very likely that you or a family member will be scammed. It is also likely that the amounts of money involved will be much larger than previous averages and that the total amount that Americans and Canadians will be scammed for is larger than ever in history…by a long shot!
As with most any crime, there are parties responsible for this! After all nothing much has changed in terms of numbers of people online and other metrics, and yet – the total amount of money being Scammed from Americans is up over 10 fold since 2019. Let me start with who is not responsible – or who is LESS Responsible….
1 The Scammers – or at least most of them. Human Trafficking and Slavery exists in other parts of the world – and even here in the USA. Add Poverty and Violence to the mix and there will always be plenty of scammers. Those of us who have been online for decades remember many scams – often involving obvious emails or craigslist purchases. I’d be surprised if even 1 in 10,000 of the targets of these early online scammers took the bait. Yet today it seems like MANY more do, The reasons are simple…..the Scammers have become vastly smarter. They are true professionals- at crime!
2 The Victims – Victims have a hand in the tremendous rise of Scams – however, if our institutions and corporations did a better job in terms of stopping fraud, Scams could be cut WAY down.
2 gives a hint as to the perps…those who truly allow these Scams to grow unabated.
Public Enemy Number One for Scams is our own Government. The Government has declared “hands-off” and disbanded some of the task forces that were cracking down on these frauds. They are largely ignoring “white collar crime” of all types – in favor of the “new 9/11 War on Immigrants”. In terms of setting examples – our current Admin is selling their own Crypto-Currencies – and promoting them from the White House! Since Cryptocurrencies are the favored way to Scam victims, this is setting a very bad example.
Public Enemy Number Two – is Facebook, Youtube or any Corporations which allows fraud to occur on their platforms. Facebook knows that their platform is one of the preferred meeting spaces for the perps and their victims. In some cases the entire Scam takes place on one of these Web sites, but most of them move to Telegram or Signal or another Platform which allows for more secrecy.
These two entities are closely related – that is, the Web Sites and Corporations will take no action to reign in the meeting up of Scammers…unless the Government forces them to. The Government is currently full of people who may themselves be invested in cryptocurrencies – giving them little reason to crack down.
Public Enemy Number Three – is the Lack of Regulation of the cryptocurrency market. Without these secretive fake currencies it would be much more difficult to separate people and their money. Transactions would have to go through banks or similar services…and just as Credit Card company detect a very high percentage of fraud, so could banking system detect it.
I wish I could say this was going to slow or stop. However, when the Government and biggest Corporations of the richest country in the world are A-OK with NOT protecting their citizens, the result can only be a growth of the Scam Industry.
Human Nature cannot be changed. Those who say “the victims can just stop” have little understanding of the Social Sciences. Most every person has weaknesses and professionals can find them – and exploit them. This is why families try to protect their elders and/or financially ignorant relatives. However, IMHO when 30+ Billion is involved (now), it is a National Emergency and the Government needs to declare the reality and act.
Sadly, I don’t see this happening in the near future.