THE ANATOMY OF A TYPICAL SCAM What follows is the anatomy of a typical scam. The sole objective of a scam is to engage you (via voice or digitally). Avoid being engaged and you have already disarmed a scam attempt.

Basics of a Scam From the point of initial contact, scammers seek to instruct you to do something. AND, each successive step follows:

• More instructions,
• Escalation of a sense of urgency,
• Is more demanding, and
• Creation of a scenario where there is a financial problem (loss of funds, error in billing for something you did not purchase or a claim of fraud exposure) that ONLY they are equipped to help you correct.

What should YOU do?
The first thing you need to do is to ask yourself, “Did I initiate the contact or did they?” If you didn’t initiate the contact, there is a very high likelihood the contact is from a scam. Delete it, report it as Spam and Block the email, phone number or text.

If you are concerned that the contact is valid, follow the advice above, then contact the supposed institution directly yourself at a published, trusted phone number for the fraud department of that organization.

NOTE: – if you are contacted by a credit card company or a bank, they may legitimately contact you if they think your purchase meets their criteria for likely being fraudulent. If you didn’t make a very recent purchase, deposit funds into your account or withdraw funds from your account, it is very likely a scam.

If you did make such a transaction, you can either go online or call the institution directly (i.e. you initiate the contact) to discuss the alert they sent you. If they say they did not send you an alert, you will immediately know you were contacted by a scam artist.

OUR ADVICE Follow proper protocol and don't panic. The most important thing you can do is STOP, THINK & DELETE!