These 4 costly financial scams are on the rise: How to protect your money

03.04.2024 - 20:09 / thepointsguy.com

Technological advancements have provided us with countless benefits. We can preorder our Starbucks while waiting in an airport security line, use our smartphone to unlock our hotel room door and stream our favorite shows to our hotel room TV.

However, the same technologies that make our lives easier also make a scammer's life easier. Advances in social engineering, artificial intelligence and our ever-growing digital footprints are making it easier than ever for fraudsters to target victims with sophisticated, complex and large-scale scam operations.

To better understand and combat fraudsters, Visa recently released the spring 2024 version of its Biannual Threats Report, an overview of the most prolific financial threats within the past seven-month period (June-December 2023).

Related: Why small charges on your credit card could mean big problems

In addition to identifying the threats, Visa also outlined the more than $10 billion technology and innovation investment it has made to stay one step ahead of scammers and protect consumers. In 2023 alone, Visa blocked $40 billion in fraud, and in the June-December 2023 reporting period, it declined more than 49.8 million presumed fraudulent transactions.

TPG spoke with Michael Jabbara, a vice president and global head of fraud services at Visa, to learn more about the most common scams affecting consumers and how you can protect yourself and your money.

Here are the four scams that are costing consumers the most money right now.

Pig butchering scams (sometimes referred to as "romance scams") are most often carried out through social media or online dating sites. The fraudster typically poses as someone interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with the victim. The fraudster gains the victim's trust during a courting period, eventually defrauding the victim by convincing them to invest in a fake cryptocurrency platform.

"They're called pig butchering scams because they are carried out over a long period of time," Jabbara told TPG. "Essentially, the threat actor is 'fattening the pig' by gaining their trust and 'butchering the pig' when they ask for the money and clear them out," he added.

It may seem like a lot of work without much payout if fraudsters have to spend weeks or months leading their victims on before defrauding them, but scammers can leverage technology to cast a wider net. Fraudsters can leverage AI and deepfake technology to create a more convincing relationship with their victims or communicate with multiple potential victims simultaneously.

In fact, 10% of adults surveyed for Visa's study reported they had been targeted in a pig butchering scam, leading to billions of dollars lost. In November 2023, for example, the U.S. Department of