In recent weeks, the Colorado State University Police Department has seen a sharp increase in attempted elaborate and complex scams targeting students, faculty and staff.
This message will provide you with information about some (but not all) of these, red flags to watch for, and how to report suspected scams.
“CSUPD is constantly monitoring for scams that target our community members,” said CSUPD Sgt. Wil Nichols. “Scammers are getting smarter, making their scams more personalized and harder to detect.”
Scams are perpetuated through phone calls, texts, emails, social media and sometimes in person.
Scammers attempt to make a connection with victims to build trust. After some trust is built, the scammer starts to weave a story about how they need money. Usually, the scammer presents themselves as being out of the country and unable to meet in person.
Usually, the scammer asks for money through a gift card, direct transfer, or money order. The scammer promises to repay the victim or give them some sum of money in return.
Scammers are becoming more sophisticated and harder to identify from the outset:
- Using real money: Sometimes the initial money sent by the scammer is real. The initial payment may be drawn from a real business’ bank account that has been compromised. This creates two victims, the business, and our community member. Our community member may deposit the check and when it goes through, they send the money to the scammer. The business notices the missing money, puts a stop on the check, and now the CSU member is in debt to the bank for whatever money they sent out.
- Researching the victim: The scammers may do online research about their victim to earn trust more easily. This includes looking at social media accounts and other online information. They use this information to appear credible.
- Impersonating friends, supervisors or others: Some recent scams at CSU involved the scammer studying a CSU organization chart, emailing an employee with a cleverly faked Gmail account that mimickes their supervisor’s name, requesting the employee give them money or purchase gift cards. All these characteristics lend to plausibility and trust.
- Using breached information: Scammers might use stolen data from information breaches. Recently, one scammer criminally impersonated one of our students to steal a substantial amount of money from a student club. They transferred some of the stolen money to an account in the name of another person that they had also impersonated.
The best defense is to be very suspicious of any emails, social media messages, texts or any online messages from someone asking for money, particularly if it is a person you have not met in person and the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Three hallmarks of a scam
Every scam uses one or more of these elements to hook a potential victim and obtain money:
- Random, unsolicited requests for money or financial information, or offers of money or a job.
- High pressure including intimidation, fear of harm to yourself or someone else, or high pressure to trust the scammer or do what they say before they will stop communicating with you.
- Threats and fear, including threats of embarrassment, harm to the caller/scammer, harm to you or others.
Red flags that it’s a scam
In addition to these three hallmarks of a scam, these red flags help you identify potential scams:
- If someone pressures you for payment via Venmo, PayPal, gift cards, Western Union, or MoneyGram, be extremely cautious and validate the request before sending any money.
- Government agencies generally won’t call you and demand payment to avoid being arrested. This includes threats of being charged with a crime or deportation.
- Some scammers will accuse you of committing intentional fraud or threaten that information about you is being sent to collections for a debt that you have not incurred.
- If you are an international student, do not send money to resolve threats that you will be arrested or deported. Go to the INTO or International Programs office for help.
- Never share sensitive, personal, or financial information over the phone, email, or social media, even if the person seems legitimate and the information they are sharing is accurate.
- The University does not allow unsolicited job offers to be emailed to employees and students over university email, even if the offer appears to come from a student or employee.
- If you are offered a job that sounds too good to be true, it likely is. If you are asked to purchase anything as part of an unsolicited job, it is likely a scam.
- Talk to your bank before depositing checks from sources you don’t know and trust, particularly sources asking for help with transferring money, or who are offering you an unsolicited job.
- Some scams threaten embarrassment by building personal relationships with you, then asking for sexual, compromising or embarrassing videos, photos or information. Once they have that information, they then threaten to share the images or information unless they are paid. If you experience one of these scams, contact your local law enforcement.
- Other scams are perpetrated online, often via dating or social media sites, under the guise of romantic interest, often spending months building trust yet never being available to meet in person. These scammers will build an online relationship with their victim, and then get the victim to send money or gift cards to help them out of financial or legal trouble.
Our advice
- Protect your personal information. Lockdown privacy options on social media, and don’t accept requests to engage from people you don’t know.
- Don’t provide access to your Social Security number or financial account information to anyone.
- Don’t send money to anyone you don’t know and trust through a money exchange site such as Venmo or Paypal, gift cards, Western Union, or Moneygram.
- If you were contacted by someone claiming to be with a government or financial agency, validate the information. Don’t call the numbers given to you or visit a website provided to you via phone or email to validate authenticity. Instead, search the internet for an independent source of this information.
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- Google the phone number that called or texted you. Is it on a scam alert warning website?
- Look up online information about the office or agency that called you. Does the phone number you were given match?
- If you are being threatened with collections, arrest, or deportation, call the number listed online (not the one provided to you by the potential scammer) of the agency, such as the police department or IRS. Ask to verify the information you were provided.
- Visit online sites that list scams, such as consumer.ftc.gov, to check any request for money or information.
Reporting scams
- If you have fallen victim to a scam and have given money, financial information, personal information or gift cards to someone, report it to the local police department that has jurisdiction over your residence – your local city police or county sheriff’s office.
- If you are a student who lives on campus or an employee who has fallen victim to a scam as part of your employment with CSU, report scams to CSUPD (police.colostate.edu).
- Preserve evidence, such as text messages, social media communications, emails, receipts from credit or gift cards, bank statements, and other evidence that may help police investigate the scam.
- Report the scam to one of these government reporters which better track these crimes at a national level:
- The government reporter is especially helpful in the tracking and monitoring of scams across the country. For the most efficiency, it is best to report to the government reporter versus CSUPD since they are often unable to take any action against the scammers due to the elusive nature of their crimes. If you have been a victim of a scam, don’t be embarrassed to make a report. Scams target thousands of people across the globe on a daily basis and, although it may feel like CSU is singled out, scammers rarely only target our community; the scams we experience are perpetrated worldwide.
Examples of recent attempted scams
- Contacts a potential victim on social media and begins a conversation. Over the course of a conversation, the scammer claims to be someone who will “just listen” to the potential victim or wants some sort of relationship with the victim, even if it is only to offer the victim financial assistance
- Contacts a potential victim on social media and convinces the victim that they are interested in them sexually, receives compromising photos of the victim and then threatens to send the photos to every person the victim is linked to on social media.
- Contacts the victim over email or other communications means with unsolicited job offers.
- Contacts someone selling an item online and offers to purchase the item for much more than the asking price.
