Insider Today: Scammers on the loose

12.07.2024 - 14:18 / insider.com / Monica Humphries / Kevin Costner

Welcome back to our Saturday edition and the start of the busiest season for traveling. One mom who visited Rome last July has a few tips on maneuvering during its peak tourist season: Sightsee at night and splurge on travel insurance.

On the agenda:

But first: Scammers are on the loose.

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"I was in shock and my heart dropped," Daniel Pietschnig told Business Insider's real estate reporter, Alcynna Lloyd. He and his wife had been scammed out of a $32,000 down payment for their first home.

The FBI said last year thousands of people lost $350 million to real-estate scams in 2021, an increase of 64% from 2020. In fact, BI has been reporting on scams and how they can wreck one's financial life and sanity for years.

Another man and his wife were scammed out of more than $31,000, which they thought they'd given to a pool operator. Turns out they'd been conned into sending thousands of dollars to nameless email addresses in a Zelle scam.

Last year, lifestyle reporter Monica Humphries found dozens of travelers had fallen victim to an Airbnb scam in which hosts use a different address in a more ideal neighborhood to boost rentals.

Now that we're in the slower months of the year, it's a good time to shore up ways to prevent yourself and your bank account from costly scams — from thoroughly checking your mail (yes, snail mail) to being wary of paying anything upfront.

Gut health is a hot topic these days. Research shows a healthy gut microbiome is linked to numerous benefits, from improved mood to smoother digestion.

Dr. Max Nieuwdorp, an endocrinologist and internist, says it can also affect our hormones. He shared the lifestyle changes he's made to support his gut health and, in turn, his endocrine system. (Hint: Ease up on the red meat.)

See his lifestyle changes .

Sometimes you need to flop before you slay. Coach's designer handbags, an It-Girl staple in the aughts, fell out of fashion by the mid-2010s. Its reputation took a serious hit as consumers increasingly saw the monogrammed bags as cheap or outdated.

That's why the Coach renaissance of the 2020s is all the more stunning. A successful rebrand, led by a Gen Z-oriented marketing campaign, has launched Coach to It-Bag status once more.

Inside Coach's renaissance .

Actor Kevin Costner mortgaged his home to put $38 million of his own money into his passion project, the epic western "Horizon." Then the film bombed.

Even Costner's sizable "Yellowstone" following couldn't save it from the box-office bin. Remarkably, it's also not the first time Costner bet and lost big on a movie passion project. (Remember "Waterworld"?) As it turns out, self-financed auteur projects rarely