LifeSmart Senior Services

The Tariff Scams are Coming

As they always do when something is prominent in the news, scammers are eager to take advantage of the situation for new scams. In the last few months scammers have registered more than 300 websites including one entitled "U.S. Customs and Tariffs" that we can expect they will be using to scam businesses and individuals into making payments. We can expect companies and even individuals to start receiving phishing emails with phony invoices for goods that contain an indication of a charge for the tariffs and direction to the phony AI created websites to make the payments.

Another tariff related scam starts with an email that appears to come from Federal Express, UPS or some other delivery service claiming that they have a package for you, but in order to have it delivered you need to pay a tariff through a link to a legitimate appearing, but phony website. In a variation on the previous delivery scam, someone posing as a Federal Express or other delivery service employee actually comes to your home the day after you received a delivery asking you to pay for the tariff on the delivery you received. In this case the scammer has learned of the delivery through hacking your computer.

TIPS

The truth is that tariffs are typically paid by importers when goods enter the country. These costs are often passed on to consumers as part of the purchase price of the product, but are not included as a separate item on a bill for a consumer good. Anyone or any company that is not an importer receiving a bill asking them to pay a tariff is being contacted by a scammer and you should ignore it. Also, neither Federal Express nor any other delivery service collects tariffs from people to whom they deliver items.

*Article by Steven Weisman, Esq.
--Scamicide.com

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