Fraud and consumer scams are on the rise in the US, and they’re affecting many places, including Mississippi.
That’s what people from the Federal Trade Commission, Mississippi’s legal experts, and groups that fight for consumer rights said at a community meeting on Wednesday at the Arts Center of Mississippi building in downtown Jackson.
Lois Greisman, associate head of the FTC’s division of marketing practices, said that more than $10 billion in fraud losses were reported to the agency in 2023. This was 14% more than the amount of losses reported in 2022. Greisman said that most of the losses were caused by cryptocurrency trading scams.
The commission’s records show that fraud cost Mississippi $37.9 million last year, with 12,749 such crimes being recorded. Based on the numbers, the average loss from theft in 2023 was $375 per person.
The three most common types of fraud in Mississippi and its five major cities were imposter scams, online shopping and bad reviews, and prizes, raffles, and lotteries.
This is very important for the FTC to know what’s going on in neighborhoods. Fraud affects different communities in different ways, sometimes very differently. Greisman told the people there, “We need to know what’s going on on the ground.”
Senior litigator Harold Kirtz with the FTC’s Southeast Regional Office said that people in Mississippi run into these scams when they are looking for work or “money-making opportunities.”
The FTC said that Mississippians can be fooled by the fake offers because the state has a high poverty rate and people don’t know how to spot scams.
“In 2023, Mississippians filed over 400 complaints because they were caught up in job scams,” Kirtz told us. “In the same year, 1,500 more Mississippi customers said they were involved in other schemes to make money.” People were getting letters telling them they had won prizes. To get their gifts, they only had to pay a fee. There was no prize. People who put money into the scam lost it all.
The FTC said it’s likely that someone you know has been a victim of a scam. Older people and small children were the most at risk, while Black and Latino people were more likely to be harmed by race.
She said she sent $4,000 to a con artist on Dec. 13, 2023, hoping to get church supplies for St. Anne Catholic Church in Carthage. However, she was scammed.
She said she sent the money through Walmart and West Union Bank. Mollinedo said that she had only told her husband about what had happened.
In spite of the “shame” that comes with being scammed, Adreain Reynolds, an attorney with the North Mississippi Rural Legal Service Center, said that the best thing to do is to report the crimes.
