Bogus WSDOT texts that say you owe a toll. Police impersonators who say you missed jury duty and have to pay. State financial regulators warn that twenty-first century fraud operations are more organized, polished, and persuasive than ever before.
In many cases, the people involved are overseas, “in these call centers and all they are doing all day long is running these scams,” said Ali Higgs, director of consumer services for the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions.
Her division oversees consumer financial services including cryptocurrency assets and money transmitters ranging from wire services to crypto kiosks and platforms like Venmo and PayPal.
“There are laws in place that you can get your money back in certain situations. Crypto doesn’t have some of the same protections as, say, a wire or some other way,” said Higgs.
According to Higgs, impersonation scams frequently use shock and emotion to overwhelm victims into making a bad decision, whereas romance and investment scams often stretch out over time to gain the victim’s trust.
Forgeries are more realistic and easier to generate with AI, officials say. An emerging threat involves scammers who clone the voice or face of a target’s relative, then use the simulation to plead for money.
“It takes as little as 30 seconds of audio of their voice which may be something that they posted online on social media. They can clone not only their voice, but their image as well as if they are live on screen with you,” said Faith Anderson, acting director of the Securities Division at DFI.
“The level of vigilance it takes to avoid becoming a victim of these scams is incredible,” said Anderson.
One elaborate scheme that DFI flagged in February involved an “alleged venture capitalist firm” that set up a Zoom call with a local fintech company and convinced them to click a link during the meeting.
“In the background that installed what we refer to as a remote access trojan that allowed the scammers to see everything the company was doing on that computer,” said Anderson.
The scammers were even able to pass a multifactor authentication test to steal cryptocurrency under the radar, according to Anderson.
This year DFI threw its weight behind a legislative push to set daily transaction limits on cryptocurrency kiosks where cash is converted into virtual currency.
The bill was a response to a spike in imposter fraud scams targeting seniors, who use the machines as payment portals. Ultimately the legislation stalled, but proponents plan to bring it again next year.
While scam victims are sometimes too embarrassed to report the theft, Higgs argues, “anyone can be scammed, this is very highly sophisticated stuff.”